Student Perceptions

Aaron Lanterman lanterma at ece.gatech.edu
Sun Feb 1 06:27:57 UTC 2004


On Sat, 31 Jan 2004, David T. Lewis wrote:

> I would not be surprised if many CS students think of Squeak as a wierd
> thing. I suspect that many of them are suffering from the misperception
> that they are somehow going to make a living writing computer programs,
> and are concerned that the "skills" they learn be "relevant" in the
> commercial marketplace. I'm sure that they will be disabused of these
> notions soon enough, but for your ECE students this may be less of

Alas, it's just as much of a concern among ECE students, if not more so.
Indeed, much of the College of Engineering - not just at the student
level, but at the faculty level - wound up revolting against CS1321, which
is based on Scheme, the main complaint that people got out knowing
recursion, but not knowing how to interpret a simple for loop. (I'd seen
that several times in the ECE2025 class I teach, which uses MATLAB - our
students are supposed to have had CS1322, which uses Java, but there was a
weird loophole where biomed majors could get into 2025 with only having
had 1321.)

I absolutely adore Scheme, and consider SICP the most mindblowing book
I've ever read. But everyone I know who likes it came to it later in their
career... I think you have to be at a certain level of maturity to really
appreciate it.

I often talk to transfer students who had a course in C as their _first_
language. It makes me shudder. I tell them, "oh, that's awful, C's such an
awful choice for a first language," and then they ask "why's that?"

We haven't taught enough CS if they have to ask why C is an awful choice
for a first language.

Similarly, my colleagues in ECE ask "well, what's wrong with C++?"
Aaaaaaack. "Well, how much time do you have?"

I recall Mark Guzdial telling me that one of the programming teams in the
"Objects and Design" class at Tech, which uses Squeak, gave themselves the
team name "WeShouldBeDoingThisInC++," or something like that. Aaaack.

- Aaron

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Dr. Aaron Lanterman, Asst. Prof.       Voice:  404-385-2548
School of Electrical and Comp. Eng.    Fax:    404-894-8363
Georgia Institute of Technology        E-mail: lanterma at ece.gatech.edu
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