[OT] Re: Andrei's list of barriers to D adoption

[Jonathan M Davis via Digitalmars-d]

On Saturday, June 11, 2016 08:06:21 Ola Fosheim Grøstad via Digitalmars-d 
wrote:
> On Friday, 10 June 2016 at 18:59:02 UTC, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
> > then as it is later. In some ways, it would actually be very
> > beneficial to actually go back to school to study that stuff
> > after having programmed professionally for a while, but that's
> > a pain to pull off time-wise, and the classes aren't really
> > designed with that in mind anyway.
>
> I am definitively considering it, maybe on some topics that I've
> read on my own, to fill in the missing bits. Or topics that has
> had some advances since the 90s. It wouldn't be too much of a
> pain as I could get there in 15 minutes on a bike, so it would
> just be exercise. I believe lectures at the University of Oslo
> are open to the public if there is enough space, and the fee at
> the University of Oslo is at $100/semester so the threshold for
> signing up is low. And I don't even have to do the exam, which
> probably makes it more enjoyable.

LOL. 10x that would be cheap in the US, and I don't think that your average
school will let folks sit in on courses (though some will). For your average
college in the US, I would only expect anyone to take classes if they're
actually working towards a degree, though I'm sure that there are exceptions
in some places.

> > world.  I don't envy teachers having to figure out how to teach
> > basic programming concepts.
>
> Yes,  some people are simply never going to be able to do
> programming well... I'm talking having trouble reading code with
> basic input - output loops (not even writing it) after having it
> carefully explained to them many times. With some students you
> know they will never be able to pass the exam after the first few
> sessions. But you cannot tell them to quit... so you have to
> encourage them, basically encouraging them to strive towards a
> certain failure. That's frustrating.
>
> Educational institutions should probably have an aptitude test.
> At the entry level courses maybe 30% are never going to be able
> to become even mediocre programmers.

It works better when the school itself is really hard to get into. For
instance, my dad went to MIT, and according to him, you usually don't have
much of a need for weeder courses there, because it was already hard enough
to get into the school that folks who can't hack it won't even be there -
and it's an engineering school, so you're typically going to get very smart,
well-prepared students who want to do engineering.

Contrast that with schools where almost anyone can get in, and there are
always problems with folks entering engineering programs where they can't
hack it - especially computer science, since it doesn't obviously involve
the really hard math and science that would scare many of those folks away.
You freqeuntly either end up with the school trying to weed out a lot of
folks up front by having very hard beginning courses or making their
beginning classes easy in an attempt to make it so that everyone has a
chance, though I think that tends to just delay the inevitable for many
students.

I can appreciate wanting to give everyone a chance, and I'm sure that there
are folks who have a hard time at first who get it later, but many folks
just don't seem to think the right way to be able to program. So, I agree
that it would be nice if there were some sort of aptitude test up front that
at least indicated whether you were likely have a very hard time with
programming. But I don't think that I've ever heard of any schools doing
anything like that (though obviously, some could be, and I just haven't
heard of it). And I don't know how you would even go about making such a
test, though I expect that there are computer science professors out there
who would.

- Jonathan M Davis