Comments on: Reducing the load: ways to support novice programmers

By: Stewart

Stewart — Thu, 24 Sep 2020 20:03:16 +0000

Hello I am really not surprised that nobody has thought it merited a response. However all is true and many electronic techs have thanked me for help in getting the hang of the required mind set both in the UK (at the very bottom) and overseas (at Graduate level in the 1980’s.
Time to liberate folks and not keep it hidden.

Only society can win the global problems if you freely educate.

By: Stewart

Stewart — Sun, 12 Jul 2020 10:07:59 +0000

In reply to Mark Richardson.

Thank you Mark for sharing your successful experience.
Since (mostly) a human input is required to ‘start’ a dialog with a computer I got the student to write a line of code asking for the input and displaying that request on the screen…this leads to an immediate sign of success !
Then testing boundaries such as is the number between (say) 1 and 10. Anything outside of the boundary to display an error message as well as the number that was input. In other words each line of code has to be checked immediately after it’s operation.
Better still to display each line both before and after operation.
I also got the teams to form themselves into a Leader, an outliner of code expectations (ie the function) and the actual coder with the Leader double checking on the performance of the function. This we did in the early 1980’s way before any of the fancy terminology now flying around. BTY the best coder checkers are the very people that are losing their jobs; every day clerical personnel. They would dearly love to be part of the future because they are very meticulous with their thinking and since software such as Windows keep crashing with each and every update why don’t they employ clerical staff for testing purposes and leave the rest to the high fliers ?? I welcome any constructive feedback.

By: Stewart

Stewart — Sat, 11 Jul 2020 17:21:35 +0000

Thank you for sharing this. In the 1980’s I taught Youth Trainees aged 16’ish and taught them the basics of C programming from scratch in less than 2 hrs by guiding them how to think using concepts and the results were remarkable such that I was removed from the class instructor role for causing trouble.. I then taught a group of secretaries the reduced instruction set by use of an example and getting them to use group think to amend the example to produce a different outcome; they were highly delighted. I then suggested that we encourage primary school pupils to learn the basics of programming concepts but was told ‘to mind my own business; it will never happen’. What was really meant was ‘we don’t want it to happen because ‘they’ will realise that it is too easy and we will lose our high salaries’. What a waste of all those years for sheer greed and stupidity !
What have I done? Taught myself Linux and hade 5 different versions on a 500 Gb HDD and used a Raspberry Pi to learn the Command Line and manage Synaptic for Application investigations; in other word a replacement PC. So all was not lost because after a serious car accident in 1995 which resulted in moderate brain damage I found a recovery method by utilising my previous private study.

By: Mark Richardson

Mark Richardson — Tue, 07 Jul 2020 20:36:49 +0000

I’ve used the subgoal a approach for years, it DOES help. Since the evolution of modular programming, stub testing doesn’t get much traction. Build the core, add testable units to the core bit by bit. After a while, you’re familar with the system design that has evolved and very efficient. (for those of us who craft from their head)

By: Max

Max — Mon, 06 Jul 2020 13:28:40 +0000

This is an interesting bit of information, totally in line with what I have been learning about concepts. Love this, am going to share and use it!
Max