[mtl_usr]

When I was about 6 or 7 there was a complete section of my math textbook which contained informations and example on the BASIC language. We, of course, never read those chapters in class but I did anyways while bored with the actual stuff the teacher would say.

It would use a very simple and systematic flowchart representation to model control flow. The great thing about it is that once you understood < > = (also taught in the class) the whole program could be readable.

I think I was the only one to read it and pretty much got the feeling it wasn't important as nobody, even the teacher, payed any attention to it.

[contingencies]

I remember thinking that math classes would be far more interesting if we were allowed to hand in a program to solve the class of problems they were asking us to manually and repeatedly solve, and to bring that program to the exam. Presto: actual comprehension of a nontrivial problem space, real world documentation skills and no rote learning requirements.

[mtl_usr]

> I remember thinking that math classes would be far more interesting if we were allowed to hand in a program to solve the class of problems they were asking us to manually and repeatedly solve, and to bring that program to the exam

With programmable graphing calculator that's sorta possible. At least, I've done it a few times.

Alas, it was most often banned from exams because "I can't see what you have done there to get that answer".

Also, most of the class ended up using my program for a specific class of problems we had to do in maths. In retrospect, I probably caused some harm by getting my classmates to be that lazy during exams.

[dragonwriter]

> I remember thinking that math classes would be far more interesting if we were allowed to hand in a program to solve the class of problems they were asking us to manually and repeatedly solve, and to bring that program to the exam.

How do you have test cases without first solving a number of problems in the space without the program you are writing?

[contingencies]

The teacher and the book would explain the case, and the teacher would take us through a few on the board.