Groups > comp.lang.java.programmer > #37091

Re: A small challenge at beginner's level

Path	csiph.com!aioe.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail
From	Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk>
Newsgroups	comp.lang.java.programmer
Subject	Re: A small challenge at beginner's level
Date	Tue, 8 Aug 2017 21:00:48 -0400
Organization	Aioe.org NNTP Server
Lines	46
Message-ID	<omdmrs$b6m$1@gioia.aioe.org> (permalink)
References	<exercise-20170803112636@ram.dialup.fu-berlin.de> <slrnoo6aad.o2q.avl@logic.at> <199fd5af-e4a2-4451-97bf-0e19ad9fc2d9@googlegroups.com> <teaching-FizzBuzz-20170808161641@ram.dialup.fu-berlin.de>
NNTP-Posting-Host	PBuS014lhzVyHjLbXmo/ZQ.user.gioia.aioe.org
Mime-Version	1.0
Content-Type	text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding	7bit
X-Complaints-To	abuse@aioe.org
User-Agent	Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:52.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/52.2.1
X-Notice	Filtered by postfilter v. 0.8.2
Content-Language	en-US
Xref	csiph.com comp.lang.java.programmer:37091

Show key headers only | View raw

On 8/8/2017 11:21 AM, Stefan Ram wrote:
> Eric Douglas <e.d.programmer@gmail.com> writes:
>> The first simple beginner's challenge should of course be the FizzBuzz test.
> 
>    Depends on the definition of "beginner". I am often giving
>    beginner's courses with just 18 hours for participants with
>    no previous programming knowledge/experience, and I can report:
> 
>    At the /end/ of my beginner's course most (estimated: at
>    least 95 percent) of the participants of this course will
>    /not/ be able to pass FizzBuzz. It is already too
>    advanced/difficult for them.
> 
>    Of course, I could modify the course so that it will
>    prepare especially for FizzBuzz, and then more would be able
>    to pass at the end of the course, but this is not my goal.

If the content of the training course is somewhat "normal" then
I will consider it 100 times more likely that they can do
FizzBuzz than your puzzle!

>    A problem with some books and courses "for beginners"
>    is that they overestimate how fast beginners can learn.
>    (At least according to the experiences I made with
>    participants of my courses. The participants of my courses
>    are not pre-selected, everyone who pays the fee can
>    participate. Experiences with participants pre-selected by
>    some tests or qualifications might differ.)

There is a huge different between teaching students
with an interest in programming and relevant skills
(let us broadly call it skills in math and natural
sciences), which usually gets it relative quickly,
and students that are having different interests
and skills, which in many cases just don't think
the IT way. They can be super intelligent etc., but
they just don't think the right way for
programming. I have taught students in Economics
and students in Languages (university students)
and I experienced it many times that some otherwise
bright students struggled enormously with
programming.

Arne

Back to comp.lang.java.programmer | Previous | Next — Previous in thread | Find similar | Unroll thread

Thread

Re: A small challenge at beginner's level Andreas Leitgeb <avl@logic.at> - 2017-08-03 13:42 +0000
  Re: A small challenge at beginner's level Andreas Leitgeb <avl@logic.at> - 2017-08-03 14:02 +0000
  Re: A small challenge at beginner's level Martin Gregorie <martin@address-in-sig.invalid> - 2017-08-03 22:47 +0000
  Re: A small challenge at beginner's level Eric Douglas <e.d.programmer@gmail.com> - 2017-08-08 08:01 -0700
    Re: A small challenge at beginner's level Sebastian <nowhere@nirvana.org> - 2017-08-08 22:59 +0200
      Re: A small challenge at beginner's level Eric Douglas <e.d.programmer@gmail.com> - 2017-08-09 05:16 -0700
    Re: A small challenge at beginner's level Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2017-08-08 21:00 -0400

csiph-web