Timeline for Is it better to lie to students or to be pedantic when teaching Intro CS?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
28 events
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| Jun 10, 2022 at 5:06 | comment | added | Dikran Marsupial | It's funny, learning charms at Hogwarts is what I tell my students that programming is emphatically not, and that there is an underlying logic and structure to programming languages, which they should aim to learn.... But that they can't learn it all at once so they have accept some boilerplate at the start, but they shouldn't be comfortable with that in the long run. I would say "never lie", you don't need to be pedantic to avoid lying, you just don't need to tell all the truth at once. | |
| Jun 7, 2022 at 12:10 | history | edited | Buffy | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| S Oct 5, 2020 at 20:28 | history | suggested | Deduplicator | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Oct 5, 2020 at 20:22 | review | Suggested edits | |||
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| May 3, 2020 at 5:41 | comment | added | Antares | I wonder if an honest lie is a lie at all :D This is another topic, but I like the way you put it in catchy terms. I also like the overall attitude towards (learning) human beings which is evident in your text. +1! @Buffy | |
| Apr 8, 2019 at 7:28 | comment | added | setholopolus | @ToddWilcox if you know a first grade teacher who knows abstract algebra, I'd love to meet them. | |
| Mar 5, 2019 at 19:46 | history | edited | Buffy | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jul 25, 2018 at 19:07 | comment | added | koverman47 | +1 My boggart is a professor that leaves out details and makes no mention of the omission. | |
| May 16, 2018 at 15:40 | comment | added | Oleg Lobachev | I broadly used the term "black magic" for parts of the boilerplate in a program people don't need to understand yet, but are asked to blindly copy for now. | |
| May 16, 2018 at 9:25 | comment | added | Raphael | "I'll also note that infants learn to speak a native language without everything being explained to them before they begin" -- True. But: that takes years (decades, even) and regularly fails to produce speakers/writers with full command of their native tongue. Neither is really acceptable in (CS) education. | |
| May 16, 2018 at 9:24 | comment | added | Raphael | "don't lie in such a way that the student later needs to unlearn something" -- Most important sentence in this answer, and often violated. | |
| May 11, 2018 at 14:30 | comment | added | user2219896 | @ToddWilcox There is an algebraic structure called near-ring where addition does not need to be an Abelian group, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-ring . Or was the idea that one lies to students that addition must be commutative? | |
| May 10, 2018 at 3:27 | comment | added | jpmc26 | @JollyJoker And your computer memory and processing speed. | |
| May 9, 2018 at 17:16 | comment | added | Ti Strga | @PabloH has the correct idea. My own preference is abstraction in the CS sense, alternatively: "A Wittgenstein's ladder is a simplified explanation of a technical or complex subject that is used as a teaching tool, despite being technically wrong." (cf wikipedia) | |
| May 9, 2018 at 16:39 | vote | accept | Ellen Spertus | ||
| May 9, 2018 at 16:10 | comment | added | RDFozz | It may not be a bad idea to be pedantic once, as an explanation for why you aren't always going to go into detail. It also gives you a way to derail a student who wants to dig into the details at an inappropriate moment - they can check back during office hours (or whatever) if they want more detail. | |
| May 9, 2018 at 16:01 | comment | added | Todd Wilcox | @Mark Mathematics, also. We definitely don't want to say things to first graders like, "In studying addition we are really looking at an Abelian group (which will later be extended to a field by adding a second operator). Some of you may be questioning whether it's truly a group and what the cardinality of the underlying set is, due to your current understanding of numbers. So we will answer those questions by expanding our discussion to countably infinite sets and additive inverses." | |
| May 9, 2018 at 0:17 | comment | added | ivanivan | @PabloH I much prefer the Discworld version :) It includes "Lies to Wizards". Being made by a computer. wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Lies-To-Children | |
| May 8, 2018 at 23:43 | comment | added | R.. GitHub STOP HELPING ICE | @LightnessRacesinOrbit: Java programs are never frictionless, but in their natural state with mass approaching infinity, they do approach becoming perfectly spherical. | |
| May 8, 2018 at 19:57 | comment | added | tonysdg | +1 for a great answer, and props for figuring out how to add a Harry Potter reference! | |
| May 8, 2018 at 17:28 | comment | added | Pablo H | Related: lie-to-children, "a simplified explanation of technical or complex subjects as a teaching method for children and laypeople". | |
| May 8, 2018 at 16:02 | comment | added | Monica Apologists Get Out | Assume a spherical cow.jar in a vacuum. | |
| May 8, 2018 at 12:05 | history | edited | Buffy | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| May 8, 2018 at 10:42 | comment | added | Lightness Races in Orbit |
public static void main(String[] args) is the entrypoint for a frictionless, perfectly spherical Java program
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| May 8, 2018 at 9:22 | comment | added | JollyJoker |
Some say public static void main(String[] args) is the most powerful spell of all. The results are only limited by your imagination!
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| May 8, 2018 at 9:08 | comment | added | Mark | Note that it's not just CS where this applies. Physics professors should prefix any discussion of friction with "This is the greatly simplified version of things. If you want more detail, plan to get your doctorate in the subject." | |
| May 7, 2018 at 23:00 | history | edited | Buffy | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| May 7, 2018 at 22:50 | history | answered | Buffy | CC BY-SA 4.0 |