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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