TDD is BS?
Nick Sabalausky
SeeWebsiteToContactMe at semitwist.com
Fri Jun 21 15:12:57 PDT 2013
On Fri, 21 Jun 2013 09:47:46 -0700
"H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh at quickfur.ath.cx> wrote:
>
> universities that actually *teach* real programming are more
> interested in finding solutions to uncomputable problems than
> teaching students how to solve computable ones
>
That doesn't match my experience (also in the US here). Granted, all my
info is from ten years ago, but what I saw was mainly a bunch of what
The "Joel on Software" guy called "Java Schools"
<http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/ThePerilsofJavaSchools.html>.
The following includes what I've seen at BGSU and OSU (party schools,
not that I personally attended OSU, but I did have a friend that went
through OSU's "RESOLVE/C++" stuff) and also JCU (a private univ that,
at least around Cleveland, is highly-regarded by everyone except me).
What I've seen at these places, and apparently many others from what I
understand, is that while they *do* recognize the importance of creating
programmers, the problems are:
- The theory is minimal to make sure they get all those high-paying
students through the revolving door.
- Tests and exams do *not* teach people. An yet, that's where the
emphasis is, instead of on instruction.
- The really *big* issue: You just simply CANNOT expect people to go
from beginner to competent programmer when they spend *at most*
one-third of their credits, and about 3 hours a week, over a mere 4
years on actual programming material instead of irrelevant liberal
arts garbage that *belongs* in high school, not a college so-called
"major".
- The nasty little details like pointer/memory problems, linker errors,
etc that real people have to deal with are neatly glossed over and
sidestepped.
- There was one CS101 teacher (I had to tutor her unfortunate students)
who constantly bragged about being from a real-world software
company...but she was a Java-addict (circa v1.2-v1.4) who kept trying
to teach OO *before* basic flow-of-execution. Consequently, none of
her unfortunate students had the slightest clue what was going on.
- Many of the professors are terrible programmers themselves. For
example, I had one who openly admitted the only language he knew was
C, and yet at one point it became painfully obvious that he had
almost no comprehension of null-terminated strings.
- Many of the teachers don't even teach, they just collect the
thousands of dollars in tuition and give you a book recommendation
(really more of a "demand" than a recommendation). Now, I'm a strong
believer in being self-taught and learning from books, but all I need
for that is a library card, not a $100k debt and four years of elitist
attitudes from people who clearly don't know what they're doing
anyway.
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