6/3 What are good books for teaching a ninth grader programming?
\_ Intro to Programming for Dummies. -tom
\_ cmlee, stop signing my name to your idiocy. -tom
\_ History of Programming: the Unsuccessful Cases.
\_ History of Programming: the Unsuccessful Cases.-tom
\_ _THE STRUCTURE AND INTERPRETATION OF COMPUTER PROGRAMS_!!!!!!!!!
THEY SHOULDN'T NEED ANY OTHER PROGRAMMING BOOK BUT THIS ONE!!!!!
BH _AND_ RICHARD FATEMAN TOLD ME THAT IT'S THE BEST COMPUTER
SCIENCE BOOK EVER WRITTEN, SO IT MUST BE TRUE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
-tom
\_ Actually is a pretty good computer science book. It
might be a little advanced for a ninth grader. I would
let the ninth grader take a look at the book, and if s/he
can understand it then use it. -emin
\_ If it is, Simply Scheme is the CS 3 book and is slower
paced. PNH is/was of the opinion that the 61a curriculum
was too much for the typical high school CS class. But,
as the end says, "Computer Science != Programming".
\_ What? Is BH a communist? Are you?
any particular language you were thinking of? --Jon
\_ I just wanna program Microsoft stuff, program cool warez and
\_ What was that book used in CS60A?
-A ninth grader
stuff and get rich ($100,000/year) like all the programmers
out there! I wanna attend Microsoft's Summer Camp, it is cool
-A ninth grader (tom)
\_ Goto BH's summer camp instead - get to use 5-year old
HP's, learn scheme, and listen to lectures on why
capitalism is bad.
\_ that makes it sound as if capitalism isn't bad.
\_ I'd rather be a part of a capitalist society
than living in bh's shiny happy communist
future.
\_ Computer Science Logo Style - http://www.cs/~bh
\_ Computer Science != Programming
\_ On the other hand, understanding CS makes you a
better programmer...
\_ Not necessarily. Most CS grad students have no
ability to write code that actually gets used.
\_ Whereas those REAL MEN out in the REAL WORLD
ALWAYS write code that's a paragon of efficiency,
safety, and reliability! Ask those satisfied
Therac-25 customers! I'm sure that most
"developers" out there have no ability to write
code that actually gets used (but are doing it
anyway). How can being a programmer _and_
having CS theory clue hurt?
\_ Safe, efficient and reliable? No, it meets
the ship deadline in a sufficiently working
computer science --> research, development, design architecture
condition. Stock price rises. Bonuses all.
\_ Programmers who do not know computer science
are not very useful. Would you want to use
a program written by someone who never bothered
to learn all that high falutin' stuff about
big O notation, quick sort, binary trees, etc?
Any fool can write a program, compute science
is for writing a robust, fast, efficient
program which can be maintained and extended.
\_ Yeah, but in the days of M$oft bloatware,
program efficiency doesn't count for shit.
Programs are developed to optimize development
time. Doesn't matter how good your code is
if someone else is dominating the market
months before your product is even done. -ERic
\_ Programming Perl.
\_ i remember starting out with basica and gwbasic, I think that's
better then diving into Scheme or LISP. maybe visual basic is
it too is not very useful to know. -lila
a good start? good luck.
\_ you are on fucking crack. there is no reason to learn basic.
scheme is actually a very nice introductory language, though
it too is not very useful to know unless you are an elite
emacs user. (though it brings a warm fuzzy feeling to me,
personally.) -lila
\_ Does lila know less about programming or emacs?
\_ I agree with you that scheme is a good introductory
language to teach computer science. However, programming
in scheme requires you to think in terms of
"functional programming". Most people are not used to
this so it might be easier to learn something else first,
even though scheme teaches computer science better.
\_ Well, uh, most people aren't used to _any_ type of
programming philosophy when they start programming, and
it's not like BASIC is intuitively easier or anything.
Everybody has to start somewhere, and they might as
well start in the right place. I think that the only
reason people still recommend BASIC for anything is
because of their misty far-away fond memories of when
they were learning to hack on their Apple ][ or C-64,
and it was the only thing available . . . "I started
out this way, so you should, too." -- kahogan
\_ _i_ started with scheme and bh, so you should too.
nyah nyah. -lila
\_ So did I. Now look at me. It launched me
on an incredibly profitable career doing
miscellaneous computer stuff based on things
I learned while trying to restart my netrek
client, which is all I did during CS60A because
it was so incomprehensibly boring :) -John
\_ I'm sorry. That's a terribly way to start. Did
you ever recover? \_ shut up, cmlee.
\_ I want cmlee's anus. Madly. I love its
tight puckered (slightly brown) rosebud
wrinkles. Ooh, the smell of it!
\_ I started with basic, then learned C, then Scheme,
and even though Scheme was harder than basic I got
more out of it than the other two combined.
\_ I think Java is a good start to beginning programming. It's easy
to learn. After that can jump right into C/C++.
\_ Teach computer science, not programming.
programming --> sys admin
computer science --> research, development, design architecture
\_ Sys admins don't program. They only setup,
configure, and maintain systems.
\_ ooh you're so eleet. I'm sure it's never
necessary to write a program to maintain a
system.
\_ Agree with you...but try convincing to
those hiring managers who are recruiting
"programmers" or "developers" if you are
a sys admin.
\_ As a sysadmin, I can't imagine why I'd
*every* want to be a full time
programmer. The very idea baffles me.
\_ WTF would someone want to learn to program, anyway?
Waste of time, IMHO.
\_ Be a slob. Write everything in shell scripts. Spend rest
of time saved by not learning to program with netrek. Cheer.
-John |
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