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Re: Students/techniques

In article <8ghkvc$1eb$1@agate.berkeley.edu>,
  ejr@lotus.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Edward Jason Riedy) wrote:
> What were the major stumbling blocks, or minor if there weren't any
> major ones?

Theory.  I think the students had difficulty grasping the
concepts/utility of covariance ("freeing the functions", "exposing" the
attributes, "subtyping" verses "subclassing", "specialization" verse
"substitution") at the theoretical level.  When we got to exercises,
however, they picked up multimethods quite naturally.

> What techniques proved the most popular / accessible?

Since everyone knew OOP to some degree, multimethods drew the most
interest.  I think the first-order functions (e.g. r/curry, map, etc)
blew most of them out of the water.

> Where there any missing you hoped to see?

Personally, I wish we had more time to go over macros.  I covered them
in the last class as the students were finishing up their final
projects.

>
> Does anyone have experience with less experienced programmers?  C++
> hackers already know how to battle with a complex language...

In most my classes that I teach, I often get a student who is very much
less experienced than the rest.  My special joy, and theirs, is, if
they hang on and work at it, they become proficient, sometimes more
proficient than other students.  It's tougher to teach a class with an
obviously overwhelmed student, but the rewards of their persistence
make teaching worthwhile.

In this Dylan class, I had a senior citizen who was in that situation.
He even offered (off-line) to drop the course, but I encouraged him to
continue, and we both were happier for it.  He learned some OOP, and I
got excited about being 70 years old and learning a crazy, new thing
because it's there and because I like to learn and because I still can
be a contributing, productive member of society and because even though
I'm physically old doesn't mean a thing about my attitude and outlook.

Another example:  in a course I'm currently teaching, Web Programming
with Perl,  I've a student who, in the first session, didn't even know
how to open the MS-DOS prompt (much less write a script), but now is
writing her own Perl scripts, understanding the concepts I'm teaching,
and correcting some of her scripting mistakes.

Yes, teaching the "less experienced" is hard, but can you fix a value
on the result?  I, happily, cannot.

Sincerely,
Douglas M. Auclair


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