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From: Oscar Benjamin <oscar.j.benjamin@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 17 Dec 2013 17:09:00 +0000
Subject: Re: Experiences/guidance on teaching Python as a first programming language
To: Wolfgang Keller <feliphil@gmx.net>
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On 17 December 2013 15:51, Wolfgang Keller <feliphil@gmx.net> wrote:
>>
>> I was also taught C as an undergrad but having already learned Java, C
>> and C++ before arriving at University I found the C course very easy
>> so my own experience is not representative. Many of the other students
>> at that time found the course too hard and just cheated on all the
>> assignments (I remember one students offering to fix/finish anyone's
>> assignment in exchange for a bottle of cider!).
>
> The problem with the C class wasn't that it was "hard". I had passed my
> Pascal class, which taught nearly exactly the same issues with
> "straight A"s before (without ever having writeen any source code ever
> before). And by standard cognitive testing standards, I'm not exactly
> considered to be an idiot.

Please don't misunderstand me: I'm certainly not saying that you're an
idiot. Also I'm sure many of the students on my course would have
fared better on a course that was using e.g. Python instead of C.

Well actually come to think of it some of the other students were
pretty stupid. The lecturer had explained that they were using a
plagiarism detector so if you copy-paste code from someone else they
could catch you out for cheating. A few people took that literally and
thought that it could detect copy-pasting (in plain text files!). The
rumour went round that it would be okay if you printed out the code
and then typed it back in. For some reason they didn't bother running
the plagiarism detector until about 6 weeks into the course by which
time ~20% of submissions were exact duplicates of at least one other
(according to the lecturer who announced that all such students would
get zero marks for those assignments).


Oscar