Funny, you read that as saying, "Zed's wrong." I read it as, I may be right. For example:
> no one challenges KSC on the basic premise, that putting introductory students in the position of discovering information for themselves is a bad idea!
The article doesn't say, "Don't get programmers studying code right away." It also doesn't say they shouldn't work on problems.
It says that the constructivist approach to teaching by giving students very little direction on complex problems right way isn't effective. Instead the direct instruction method of having them work on directed problems to build initial capabilities is more effective.
This has been the position of the direct instruction school of education for a while now. In fact, if you actually RTFA they mention that the constructivist model of is the failing. If you then read the linked articles you'll find the same thing.
Not a single thing in that linked article supports what you've stated.
Not a single thing in that linked article supports what you've stated.
I stated: "the concept of getting people programming ASAP in order to learn has been sort of poo-pooed". This is based on the article stating that programming "is a bad way to start" and "expecting students to program as a way of learning programming is an ineffective way to teach."
Funny, you read that as saying, "Zed's wrong."
Why would I have? That would be a meaningless and uninformed judgement. The effectiveness of the techniques is the interesting part. My observation - accurate or not - that the article "poo-poos" a technique is not to say that the technique is "wrong" as linking to an article says little of my opinion, which I stated as being "on the fence."
Wow, thanks for posting that link. I’m really glad the ‘learning by doing’ methodology is under some scrutiny, because it’s not the way I learn at all. For what it’s worth, if I had come across the draft of Zed’s book when I was first learning to program, I suspect I would have hated it, very quickly gotten bored, and dropped it in favor of something else. I can’t stand being presented with the absolute minimal amount of explanation required for something. Glossing over the details is the quickest way to lose my interest. I need a complete, in-depth explanation, even if I don’t necessarily understand it all at first; I will come back later and re-read parts because I know exactly where the explanation was.
Another thing that I think would have especially bothered me about this book is that there are exercise upon exercise without answers. I remember being in algebra class in high school and hating that the book didn’t provide an answer to every single exercise; without an answer, doing the exercises was almost completely useless to me because I had no idea whether I had solved them correctly.
Hacking away at something until it works with minimal explanation is certainly one way to learn, but when I’m first learning something, as a novice, that particular methodology just makes me frustrated and angry. I could go into my garage and fiddle with my car’s engine for weeks on end trying to figure out how things work, but that seems like a largely inefficient way to go about learning. There are people who know how a car engine works that can communicate their knowledge to me—after all, isn’t that the whole point of instruction and education: somebody has already figured it out, and they can explain it to you quicker than it takes for you to figure it out yourself.
This isn’t to say I can’t now hack away at something in the dark and probe it to figure out how it works—I suspect that’s a necessary skill for being a good programmer. But learning how to program initially through such a method would not have been ideal for me.
That being said, I think there’s still a lot to be said about the straightforward, practical programming advice Zed throws out. In particular his explanation about the importance of noticing minor differences is really awesome. Obviously people have different personal learning styles, and I suspect this book is geared to those who learn like Zed, so I don’t doubt it would be valuable to those people. I definitely don’t learn like this, though, and I just wanted to point that out.
You already think like a programmer, probably you were either born or raised that way. For example, you already have an attention to detail which is why you demand solid details about every possible thing before you feel as if you understand it.
I actually learn some things like you, but I had to learn to not learn this way when I started studying music. There's actually a lot of things you just cannot learn by first having all the details. Insisting that everything be presented this way will prevent you from learning a vast array of topics that require an intuitive artistic sense or require non-verbal expression.
I would say that if you read this book as a beginner and found it boring then you should move on to the books I'll mention as the next books to read. I would also say that you should try a few other ways to learn something. It'd do you some good to learn something without having to completely explain it first.
> no one challenges KSC on the basic premise, that putting introductory students in the position of discovering information for themselves is a bad idea!
The article doesn't say, "Don't get programmers studying code right away." It also doesn't say they shouldn't work on problems.
It says that the constructivist approach to teaching by giving students very little direction on complex problems right way isn't effective. Instead the direct instruction method of having them work on directed problems to build initial capabilities is more effective.
This has been the position of the direct instruction school of education for a while now. In fact, if you actually RTFA they mention that the constructivist model of is the failing. If you then read the linked articles you'll find the same thing.
Not a single thing in that linked article supports what you've stated.