Computer Science Canada

An observation on OOP exploration

Author:  wtd [ Fri Dec 15, 2006 11:02 am ]
Post subject:  An observation on OOP exploration

I know that I've made my feelings on the Turing language and environment clear, but aside from that, I'd like to say something about Turing programmers themselves.

I see some students trying to piece together how classes and objects work in Turing. I also suspect from what I've seen and heard on this site, that most courses using Turing never really get that far, and that fewer still instructors are able to offer assistance.

That makes these students people to respect.

Author:  Clayton [ Fri Dec 15, 2006 1:19 pm ]
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I don't really see what the big deal is wtd, I still think time would be better spent learning new languages Very Happy

Author:  wtd [ Fri Dec 15, 2006 1:48 pm ]
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It probably would be. However, it does show initiative, and all other things aside, I can respect that.

Author:  ericfourfour [ Fri Dec 15, 2006 4:24 pm ]
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I learned OOP on Turing and I did it in my own time. However, I think it would have gone a lot faster if I knew how pointers worked and had experience dealing with them. Smile

Author:  uberwalla [ Fri Dec 15, 2006 5:58 pm ]
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see how it mostly goes at my school is that the teachers really dont know much at all about turing or even java. their mostly textbook readers. Shocked

most of the stuff ive been doing ive learnt by myself with help from people here at compsci. now im not saying im a good programmer but from what your taking about wtd your right. theres only one person in my school that i know thats gone further then what the class has done other then me. and he is trying to make a pokemon game lol. anyways i think that if most tech teachers that teach turing and some other languages were less textbook readers and more hands-on then there would be more classes that teach classes and stuff.

(now dont think if you are a teacher or someone who has teachers different that i am saying ALL techers are like this. [this is just my point of view that i have seen in my school])

Author:  ericfourfour [ Fri Dec 15, 2006 11:39 pm ]
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I do not think that the teacher could teach OOP in the first year. The second year you learn Java. Why not save it for a language based solely around objects? This is how it is done at my school, so there is no point for the teacher to understand OOP in Turing.

This however, does not mean you will be taught proper OOP. Or actually taught it on a proper environment using a good compiler. For these reasons, I suggest learning OOP on your own well before your teacher teaches it (I would recommend at least 6 months prior). I also suggest learning it in a different language.

Author:  Clayton [ Fri Dec 15, 2006 11:49 pm ]
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IE. Ruby.

Ruby is an excellent language to learn OOP from, because in Ruby, everything is an object. Not to mention how easy it is to create and use your own classes, it really makes you want to do it. Very Happy

Author:  uberwalla [ Sat Dec 16, 2006 12:07 am ]
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the weirdest thing to what you said eric... at my school (highschool 9-12) turing is basically first 2 years then a bit of java at end of 2nd then java the next two. basically grd 9-10 turing 11-12 java

Author:  ericfourfour [ Sat Dec 16, 2006 1:46 am ]
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@Freakman
I agree, Ruby is an excellent choice. I started it today and I am thoroughly impressed. I was doing that online tutorial until I kept messing up the names repeatedly because I spelt "book" instead of "books". I then decided to download it and just go through wtd's tutorials. Smile

@uberwalla
You get programming in grade 9? You are lucky. Oh well, I guess that is what I get for going to a new school. Sad I bet the teacher could get away with putting off OOP until Java in that case too. I feel it came early in my school (no one knew how to make a method at the time).

Author:  uberwalla [ Sat Dec 16, 2006 2:04 am ]
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well mostly in grade 9 it was like tech and buisness. tech was like turing, auto cad, corel draw (LOL), adobe photoshop , html.
and then 10 is like html and turing only and there are then shop class, buisness and more. tech classes just start splitting into more categories at my school as grades move on lol. its confusing on what is in what class Shocked

Author:  Wolf_Destiny [ Sat Dec 16, 2006 5:01 pm ]
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Yeah...my CompSci teacher didn't know how to use arrays...'nuf said.

~Wolf Destiny
postcount++
Cervantes says: Posting for the sake of increasing your post count is disgusting. Such spammish posts will usually be deleted, and your post count won't increase. You'll also lose bits.
I say: I didn't mean anything by it, quite a few people have that as a signature, and many others end their posts the exact same way, and post smaller, less meaningful posts. Besides that I only had a small comment to make, and didn't feel like writing a larger post to say what I said. I also personally feel that my comment fit the context, and that it was a valid point. I am not out to increase my postcount, nor do I want more bits. I didn't join compsci.ca because of the bit system, or to try to have a huge postcount. I joined because its a great place to post programs for feedback, to ask and answer questions, and to read well written tutorials. So I'm sorry, alright?
Cervantes says: We cool, we cool.

Author:  ZeroPaladn [ Mon Dec 18, 2006 12:52 pm ]
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Wolf_Destiny wrote:
Yeah...my CompSci teacher didn't know how to use arrays...'nuf said.

Then your teacher sucked. Not to be rude, but arrays are grade 10/11 basics, and any teacher sanctioned to teach CompSci should know them.

My school system for programming is as follows:

  • Grade 9 - none
  • Grade 10 - Turing/HTML
  • Grade 11 - Turing/VB6
  • Grade 12 - VB/Java/HTML


I downloaded Ruby a little while ago, I started teaching myself. Haven'g gotten very far, but I'm getting there.

Author:  ericfourfour [ Mon Dec 18, 2006 3:57 pm ]
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Anyway, back on topic. I think a lot of this respect should go to cervantes for writing the tutorials on OOP in Turing or else I, along with many others, would not have learned it in Turing.

Author:  Cervantes [ Mon Dec 18, 2006 4:40 pm ]
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Thank you!

But then, whatever respect is directed towards me should be redirected towards wtd for teaching me the majority of what I know. Smile

Author:  Clayton [ Mon Dec 18, 2006 4:51 pm ]
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Either way, I've learned a great deal more from both of you (Cervantes and wtd) than I ever did in class. Don't be so modest.

Author:  wtd [ Mon Dec 18, 2006 7:25 pm ]
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I'm going to attribute a great deal of my knowledge to the Ars Programmers Symposium.

Author:  Danjen [ Wed Jan 10, 2007 9:31 am ]
Post subject:  Re: An observation on OOP exploration

In my school, we have basic computer programming for gr. 10, and computer engineering for grades 10 and 11. Our choices of languages include turing. Our teacher usually gets to around arrays and basic games (object collision being one of the last things taught), however, he does not know much else Confused I had to figure out how to use the Net and GUI modules, and how to use flexible arrays, records, and classes/pointers myself.

... On that note, what language(s) should I learn after turing?

Author:  rdrake [ Wed Jan 10, 2007 10:26 am ]
Post subject:  Re: An observation on OOP exploration

Danjen @ Wed Jan 10, 2007 9:31 am wrote:
... On that note, what language(s) should I learn after turing?
Ruby is a very nice, simple language. You can try it out by going here.

Author:  ericfourfour [ Wed Jan 10, 2007 4:14 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: An observation on OOP exploration

Danjen @ Wed Jan 10, 2007 9:31 am wrote:
On that note, what language(s) should I learn after turing?

This question is commonly asked and there are many threads dealing with this. Here are a few links to threads:
Where to go next?
What programming language should I learn? (updated)

Author:  Hackmaster [ Wed Jan 10, 2007 9:48 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: An observation on OOP exploration

I just saw this post, so I want to start right at the beggining of it. Smile

wtd... I firmly believe that you can't learn programming without intiative. otherwise, you want an easy credit, which you will not find. I am an obscurist in turing. I am taking it the limits and seeing what it can do! I'm now looking at the Dir and Net modules, and just playing with it in general.

In response to the issue of teachers not knowing anything, my teacher knows java. well. but not turing. The syntax kills her. BooHoo

in summary, this same person who barely knows arrays in turing is getting a student who just learned that very same syntax over 2 weeks to teach the class. I'm giving a lecture on AI tommorow, actually, and I'm going to post a tut on it as well, if I find theree hasn't already been one. Whatever. but I have taught a lot of main principals in that class, and continue to. do I mind? no! I'm learning how to teach, and learning how to program on my own time, which is fine, becuase it's a passion.

anyways, that's my view. Congrats to wtd for getting a post in the tut section that was more that a page worth of replies!

thanks!

Author:  Savage Reindeer [ Fri May 01, 2009 8:48 am ]
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[quote="ericfourfour @ Fri Dec 15, 2006 11:39 pm"]I do not think that the teacher could teach OOP in the first year. quote]

My Programming teacher is gay and doesn't teach java until grade 12. And by then there aren't enought people in the class

Author:  Prabhakar Ragde [ Fri May 01, 2009 8:54 am ]
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Savage Reindeer @ Fri May 01, 2009 8:48 am wrote:

My Programming teacher is gay


If you mean this literally, it's irrelevant. If you're using "gay" as a pejorative, that is stupid and juvenile.

Author:  Savage Reindeer [ Fri May 01, 2009 9:12 am ]
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Quote:
If you mean this literally, it's irrelevant. If you're using "gay" as a pejorative, that is stupid and juvenile.


er, I should say that he doesn't really know what he's doing. We spend an entire semester learning nothing but animation, and then move into other stuff in the second year. By the time I can formally learn a language that I might use in later life, nobody is interested in programming. Alas, I must resort to websites such as this. Nothing can substitute a good teacher to look at your code beside you and tell you whats wrong.

Author:  wtd [ Fri May 01, 2009 11:24 am ]
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Savage Reindeer @ Fri May 01, 2009 10:12 pm wrote:
If you mean this literally, it's irrelevant. If you're using "gay" as a pejorative, that is stupid and juvenile.


er, I should say that he doesn't really know what he's doing. We spend an entire semester learning nothing but animation, and then move into other stuff in the second year. By the time I can formally learn a language that I might use in later life, nobody is interested in programming. Alas, I must resort to websites such as this. Nothing can substitute a good teacher to look at your code beside you and tell you whats wrong.[/quote]

I have no problem telling you what's wrong with code. Smile

Author:  Savage Reindeer [ Fri May 01, 2009 2:37 pm ]
Post subject:  RE:An observation on OOP exploration

Of course! But I learn better when I can personally call on someone and talk to him face to face.

Funny story here:

Today we were making a sort of calculator that took arguments from another file and used them to find our current marks (I should not that he never explained that is what it did, he just dictated). Anyway, mine wasn't working for whatever reason so I called my teacher over to help. After some looking at it he said "There is something wrong with it, make sure you fix that and hand it in working,"

No joke. He does that all the time. I figured it out eventually, much later.But I digress

I think I stole your topic. I agree with you, people who use their own time to teach themselves Turing need a good pat on the back. Its people like that who I can go to for help on my own personal projects. Thanks guys (and gals)!

Author:  Prabhakar Ragde [ Tue May 05, 2009 8:08 am ]
Post subject:  Re: RE:An observation on OOP exploration

Savage Reindeer @ Fri May 01, 2009 2:37 pm wrote:

Today we were making a sort of calculator that took arguments from another file and used them to find our current marks (I should not that he never explained that is what it did, he just dictated). Anyway, mine wasn't working for whatever reason so I called my teacher over to help. After some looking at it he said "There is something wrong with it, make sure you fix that and hand it in working,"

No joke. He does that all the time.


I do that all the time, too. A student comes to my office hours, flips open their laptop, and says their code doesn't work. They're not using one of the recommended editors and they're using the default six-point font. There are no comments in the code, the indentation isn't consistent, and there's no test suite. They want me to find their bug. That is not my job, and even if it was, it would probably take me ten or fifteen minutes, not just looking at their miserable code but actually working with it to make sense of it, partially rewriting it in the process. I usually have to say, "Write some directed tests," because in the minute or two I've spent looking at their code, I have garnered no idea of where the bug is. The problem is not their program. The problem is their approach.


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