Timeline for What's the benefit of prohibiting the use of techniques/language constructs that have not been taught?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
10 events
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| Jun 29, 2023 at 14:16 | history | edited | Ben I.♦ | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Small wording changes
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| Sep 16, 2019 at 23:29 | comment | added | Chris Stratton | Ironically, arbitrariness is not necessarily a bad thing, as a learning exercise. There's actual value to making up a language or computation machine with absurd and unfamiliar rules, and learning to work within those, as it teaches precisely the kind of plasticity of thought needing to find the best solution to real problems - especially those problems where conventional techniques fail, or where past decisions (which may have been unwise, but now are set) constrain current options in a way that rules out the usual solutions. | |
| Sep 15, 2019 at 22:48 | comment | added | gnasher729 | @SoronelHaetir "Getting students used to obeying arbitrary authority is its own benefit" Where I went to school, my maths/latin/philosophy teacher who started at the school fresh from university when I entered school, and was headmaster by the time I left, prided himself in teaching the students two important abilities: To determine whether authority is right or wrong, and to fight authority when it is wrong. | |
| Sep 14, 2019 at 15:37 | comment | added | R.. GitHub STOP HELPING ICE | "There exists no problem that can be solved with a linked list that cannot also be solved with an arraylist" <-- sure there does. Ones for which there are constraints on availability of storage/in-placeness. | |
| Sep 14, 2019 at 13:24 | comment | added | alephzero | @csabinho Learning to deal with the fact that life is **** is a more important accomplishment than learning some particular programming technique, IMHO. The programming technique may or may not be transferrable to your next programming language. Your knowledge about life is guaranteed 100% transferable to every situation, up to and including death. | |
| Sep 14, 2019 at 7:33 | comment | added | csabinho | @SoronelHaetir You mean that this is a way of saying "life is ****, learn it early!"? ;-) | |
| Sep 14, 2019 at 4:58 | comment | added | SoronelHaetir | Getting students used to obeying arbitrary authority is its own benefit, they are likely going to need to do so much of their working life, even if they aren't working as programmers. The worst example of this I encountered as a student was an instructor who flat forbade use of the C "->" operator even after it was encountered in the book. He insisted that "(*ptr).member" constructs be used instead. That one I never have figured out other than it being an ego trip. | |
| Sep 14, 2019 at 3:30 | history | edited | Ben I.♦ | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Sep 13, 2019 at 23:38 | comment | added | csabinho | Even though I completely see your point, my point, which was maybe not made clear enough in my question, is why students are forced to do typical "don't try this at home"-programming because of those restrictions. Also mostly I don't have the feeling that the teachers are following a clear didactic plan which requires to solve specific examples with specific constructs but it's more about their authority, which is undermined if their students leave their path and start learning on their own(and also that some constructs are just forgotten, but that's another topic). | |
| Sep 13, 2019 at 23:00 | history | answered | Ben I.♦ | CC BY-SA 4.0 |