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Re: lectures about "programming methodology"

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  Re: lectures about "programming methodology" Thomas Richter <thor@math.tu-berlin.de> - 2013-05-08 18:41 +0200

#23932 — Re: lectures about "programming methodology"

On 06.05.2013 14:23, Stefan Ram wrote:
> ram@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) writes:
>> But I have watched only the first lectures so far.
>
>    I just watched another lecture and noticed the following:
>
>    He said something to the effect that the type »int« was there
>    to store an int value. I would say that an int /variable/ is
>    there to store a value, while the /type/ int can also be the
>    type of an expression (like »2«) that is not necessarily
>    stored anywhere at run-time.
>
>    He said that a variable had a name. This is not always true
>    in Java (he referred to Java, since he is exclusively using
>    Java). In Java there also are anonymous variables, like the
>    variables of an array.

Stephan, with all necessary respect, but this sounds very nit-picking to 
me. Ultimately, you are correct, but making it this precise is probably 
not going to help anyone in class. It typically confuses students more 
than it helps.

This said, and looking back at the courses I participated, I learned 
most where I found that the teacher was making errors, and where I was 
able to follow *despite* such errors because it kept me thinking. I also 
had classes where everything was polished, and everything worked 
correctly, but while there I always believed to understand everything in 
class, I also noticed that the presented information vanished very soon 
from my brain.

Thus, please excuse, but a lie for pedagogical reasons is at times more 
enlightening than spelling out everything correctly at first glance. As 
a teacher, it may make sense of coming back later and explaining 
students that, "well, in these and that circumstances, you need to 
understand something extra I haven't told you before".

>    I am actually watching this to learn English pronunciation
>    of programming terms (otherwise, I just would read a text),
>    and what I /did/ like was that for the word »char« he gave
>    the pronunciations of /kA&/ and /kæ&/ (where A is the open
>    back unrounded vowel and&  is the schwar), which I also use
>    (/kA&/). Bjarne Stroustrup says it was /tSA&/ (where tS is
>    the voiceless palato-alveolar affricate), well, maybe that
>    is valid for C++ programmers ...

In my experience, Americans are much less "language lawyers" than people 
in Germany (expecting from your name that you have a German backgound - 
at least I have), so one definitely shouldn't be too picky about this 
either. Specifically, the cultural background in the US is very diverse, 
especially at universities and even with teachers.

So please excuse superfluous or missing hyphens and pronunciations that 
are "off" the official one. If there even is such a thing.

So long,
	Thomas

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