Computer Science Canada :: View topic - Bitching about the curriculum

Computer Science Canada

Bitching about the curriculum

Author:	KC 40oz [ Mon Nov 01, 2004 4:56 pm ]
Post subject:	Bitching about the curriculum
Ontario schools seem to baby the idiotic kids who took BTT 101 just because they like chatting on MSN. That course was definitely a waste of time. I had an idiotic teacher that knew less about computers than me, and just 'taught' me to use word. Who doesn't know how to use word!? This year, in CompSci i spent the first month learning about hardware. Sorry, REVIEWING hardware. This class should be for people who know about computers and are interested in programming, not ignorant fools taking the class so they don't have to do any physical activity. Also, this ergonomics bullshit pisses me off. It is so ridiculous. I also want to thank the few of you who hosted the turing files. My school is cheap and does not have the distro license. May I add that i just started the actual programming today, apparently we need a month to review hardware

Author:	Tony [ Mon Nov 01, 2004 5:02 pm ]
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sorry to break it to you, but you'll be seeing this kind of crap untill 2nd year of university... actually you'll be lucky if your highschool doesn't scrap the CS program all together or in part

Author:	Mazer [ Mon Nov 01, 2004 5:11 pm ]
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Yeah, if you're actually interested in computer science, it'll probably be a while before you learn something new about it at school. Luckily you've found this website, where you'll learn new things to show off to everybody you know. But ergonomics is pretty important actually. Boring to learn about in class, but it is important.

Author:	KC 40oz [ Mon Nov 01, 2004 5:12 pm ]
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not that i expect much from the public school system, but it is kind of ridiculous i could probably learn more and faster than i do at school, online also, whats with all the dumb kids? EDIT-> Well i was pushing for C++, but my teacher said hes done it a few times, and everybody failed. I do not know C++, nor do i know any other language (i've dabbled in mIRC scripting but thats hardly a language) but i was pretty confident i wouldnt bomb it, however i can see more than half the class doing so Then he wanted to do pascal or vb, though he said vb would be too easy to click and add functions and such, and we wouldnt really learn anything. So he wanted to do pascal but the school doesnt have a copy, so he was stuck with turing, though he doesnt know turing he thinks he can pick it up quickly i wanted to do C++

Author:	Tony [ Mon Nov 01, 2004 5:15 pm ]
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KC 40oz wrote: i could probably learn more and faster than i do at school, online yes, that's why we're all here KC 40oz wrote: also, whats with all the dumb kids? apparently logical thinking and common sence is not a part of education system's requirements

Author:	Mazer [ Mon Nov 01, 2004 5:20 pm ]
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To be fair (um... unfair?) the dumb kids are everywhere. There's really no escaping them. But as you get further, some will drop out of the course, and in later years there will be fewer idiots.

Author:	rizzix [ Mon Nov 01, 2004 5:24 pm ]
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yea until you reach a point where.. YOU ARE THE DUMB GUY hehe haha but trust me its all psychological (or maybe only until you reach that point hmm! )

Author:	KC 40oz [ Mon Nov 01, 2004 5:29 pm ]
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rizzix wrote: yea until you reach a point where.. YOU ARE THE DUMB GUY hehe haha but trust me its all psychological (or maybe only until you reach that point hmm! ) riiiiiight i'd like to see the day that happens and Coutsos, i'm half greek and your avatar is awesome feta is the god of cheeses and i have a rough idea of what malaka is, although the exact meaning is unclear to me. Also, i dont know what Coutsos means.

Author:	rizzix [ Mon Nov 01, 2004 5:31 pm ]
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just call him mazer (although he hates that ).. pfft "Coutsos", what a complicated name sheesh.

Author:	Tony [ Mon Nov 01, 2004 5:34 pm ]
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KC 40oz wrote: Also, i dont know what Coutsos means. you'll get it once you start C++ and umm... I would imagine most not very bright kids dropping out of the CS program after a year or two in university... Highschools will just keep on dumbing it down due to lack of understanding by both the teachers and an average student

Author:	Mazer [ Mon Nov 01, 2004 5:34 pm ]
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Hmm... I don't know if I should tell you what malaka means. LOL. Do you have any Greek friends? Go to church? (EDIT: yeah, um... don't ask what it is at church, 'k?) They'll probably know. But you probably won't want to ask your parents, it's not a very nice thing to say. As for Coutsos. It's my name. Might mean something, but then, "Smith" might mean something. Or not. If you care to know (and of course you do), my first name Nikolaos means "Victory of the People"... oh, yes. And Feta truly does rule. As for rizzix's "dumb guy" comment, all I need to do is head over to the gamedev.net forums. Well, it's more humbling than embarassing really. What I'm trying to say (aside from the Greek stuff) is that class will likely be a bitch, but hopefully you can use that time to do other homework and then spend your new found free time learning from the 'net.

Author:	KC 40oz [ Mon Nov 01, 2004 5:35 pm ]
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Oh, i assumed it was greek. Sounds greek Is there a CompSci.ca irc server/channel? EDIT-> I do have a few greek friends. We mostly make fun of the macedonians because it isnt a country (i know i know but shhh) He told me what it was once, and also said his dad slapped him for saying it i have trouble remembering what it was. As for the class, the only productive thing i can do in it is look at sites, because we are using the old white (kinda brown ) IBMs running Win98 the new black machines are used in my second period class which is Communications Technology lets just say that class isnt the hardest either Equipped qith quark xpress we make publications! Also, we had to make a button mine consisted of: A picture of cartman i made in illustrator, and a photoshop gradient

Author:	Mazer [ Mon Nov 01, 2004 5:38 pm ]
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Not yet, but there should be. Doesn't seem like it would take more than 10 minutes of work to put it together. Heck, I'd do it myself if I knew there'd be people willing to go there. But as it turns out, some mathletes over here (y'know, the kind that think hyori lee is hot) don't know how to use IRC.

Author:	rizzix [ Mon Nov 01, 2004 5:38 pm ]
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"was" you mean. yea there was one.. not anymore.

Author:	Andy [ Mon Nov 01, 2004 5:51 pm ]
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hmm... isnt there a free complier for pascal that u guys can use? pascal is actually not bad for starters

Author:	Paul [ Mon Nov 01, 2004 5:52 pm ]
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actually, I might have had a better BTT course at my school, I actually found it useful. Even if you do use the computer all the time, you still learn something. I recommend that you only take it in grade 9 though.

Author:	Mazer [ Mon Nov 01, 2004 5:52 pm ]
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Really? What happened to it, rizzix?

Author:

KC 40oz [ Mon Nov 01, 2004 5:54 pm ]

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too late
we're definitely doing turing
all the dumb kids have already made programs like this

code:

loop
put "(their name) is the greatest"
end loop

NO TUR(N)ING BACK NOW!
EDIT-> Damn im doing a lot of editing Laughing

Paul, I definitely did not take it this year, only took it last year because it was the only computer course available. I also took metal shop/auto last year Shocked

Grade 9 was funny, i got my account suspended (and i almost did too) because i downloaded mIRC and opera
opera because i hate IE, although i also disabled the proxy settings so i could surf the net unfiltered Twisted Evil

I also was a big kiddy back then and tried to infect the computers with a spybot trojan... bad move
anyways, i just had to play dumb and i was let off the hook.
Whats a spybot? Crying or Very sad

Author:	Andy [ Mon Nov 01, 2004 5:56 pm ]
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LOL... thats some pretty effed up class

Author:	Mazer [ Mon Nov 01, 2004 5:59 pm ]
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Paul wrote: actually, I might have had a better BTT course at my school, I actually found it useful. Even if you do use the computer all the time, you still learn something. I recommend that you only take it in grade 9 though. Back when I did BTT it was when we had the old computers (pre Windows era) and the radioactive monitors. We just did spreadsheets and word processing (it is business after all). That is, until the second semester when whatshisname retired and then we did all that simple computer junk. Apparently, at the end of the course (for the double period classes) they were learning BASIC.

Author:	rizzix [ Mon Nov 01, 2004 6:05 pm ]
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Coutsos wrote: Really? What happened to it, rizzix? i can't believe you don't remember.. we had a chat server or something.. i'm sure it was an IRC server.. dan/tony would know better.. but they took it off for whatever reason.

Author:	Mazer [ Mon Nov 01, 2004 6:08 pm ]
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Oh, that? But nobody really used that, right? I remember not even knowing about it until homer_simpson was asking what happened to it. Well, I'm gonna go make a channel on some free server.

Author:	Cervantes [ Mon Nov 01, 2004 6:09 pm ]
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Is mine the only school that offers grade9 BTT101 and ICS201 as a double credit course, taken simotaneously? Man, that was a quick two week BTT course

Author:	Maverick [ Mon Nov 01, 2004 6:10 pm ]
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Ergonomics is just retarded, that class was a waste of time but still good. All we did was play UT when the teacher left the room

Author:	KC 40oz [ Mon Nov 01, 2004 6:10 pm ]
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irc://irc.dcloneirc.net/compsci EDIT-> For communications technology i made a brochure of the available business courses i think there were only 2 gr 9 courses BTT 101 and BTT 104 (enriched) i definitely wish i knew about the enriched class before it was too late

Author:	Leftover [ Mon Nov 01, 2004 10:49 pm ]
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my teacher didn't care about hardware and crap, he went with the assumption that everyone knew nothing about programming and went from there, which was a pretty good start I think. Regardless I couldn't be much more informed on hardware if I wanted to.

Author:	wtd [ Mon Nov 01, 2004 11:27 pm ]
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Leftover wrote: my teacher didn't care about hardware and crap, he went with the assumption that everyone knew nothing about programming and went from there, which was a pretty good start I think. Regardless I couldn't be much more informed on hardware if I wanted to. Yes, you can be. Believing you know everything there is to know is the first step to failure.

Author:	Mr. Glib [ Sun Nov 14, 2004 3:45 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Bitching about the curriculum
KC 40oz wrote: snip long winded rant Hey KC, instead of crying the blues about how your school is filled with cheapskates and can't afford new computers and cool software, why don't you run over to your local library, chapters, whatever and get a book on the programming language of your choice.

Author:	wtd [ Sun Nov 14, 2004 3:49 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Bitching about the curriculum
Mr. Glib wrote: KC 40oz wrote: snip long winded rant Hey KC, instead of crying the blues about how your school is filled with cheapskates and can't afford new computers and cool software, why don't you run over to your local library, chapters, whatever and get a book on the programming language of your choice. Or just do a Google search. There are lots of resources out there on a wide variety of languages, and a lot of it is completely free.

Author:	Mr. Glib [ Sun Nov 14, 2004 3:53 pm ]
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Even better!

Author:	Martin [ Sun Nov 14, 2004 4:34 pm ]
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When you get into university, you realize that you learned important things in a lot of the 'secondary' courses in highschool. Unfortunately, you also realize that these things are things that you could have taught yourself in about an hour.

Author:	wtd [ Sun Nov 14, 2004 4:56 pm ]
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martin wrote: When you get into university, you realize that you learned important things in a lot of the 'secondary' courses in highschool. Unfortunately, you also realize that these things are things that you could have taught yourself in about an hour. As with many things, it ends up being the experience that's the most valuable. If only in teaching you what not to do.

Author:	Hikaru79 [ Sun Nov 14, 2004 5:01 pm ]
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KC 40oz wrote: Oh, i assumed it was greek. Sounds greek Is there a CompSci.ca irc server/channel? There is now!! Please come, it's too empty atm ;_; Info is in my sig =) And Coustos' sig, come to think of it.

Author:	md [ Sun Nov 14, 2004 6:07 pm ]
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Most of the time i spent in my programming classes (ITT something, and ICS whatever) I spent teaching myself how to do things that interested me. About once a week I'd get an assignment (which i'd do in about 10 minutes), but it was really teaching myself stuff that made the classes great. That and having a competent teacher who actually worked in the industry before teaching... Anyway my advise to anyone taking programming is to be glad that you have such a good chance to teach yourself stuff, just think it could be worse... you could be taking gym Besides, from what I gather everyone here programs on PCs. When I did programming I was taught pascal (a very nice language) on a PowerPC (mac). Unfortunatly my school was too cheap to get a good dev enviroment nad compiler so we got to compile to 68000 code, which was then interpreted by the computer IN SOFTWARE. Needless to say, 3D rendering was VERY slow...

Author:	wtd [ Sun Nov 14, 2004 10:57 pm ]
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Cornflake wrote: Besides, from what I gather everyone here programs on PCs. A majority do use Windows, and many of others are Linux users. However, today is very different from then. Open source has resulted in widespread availability of good compilers and interpreters.

Author:	templest [ Mon Nov 15, 2004 12:22 am ]
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My CompSci teacher play Counter-Strike and Quake. C'mon, that's awsome.

Author:	md [ Mon Nov 15, 2004 12:04 pm ]
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wtd wrote: However, today is very different from then. Open source has resulted in widespread availability of good compilers and interpreters. Most schools wont use open source software unless they can get someone to provide support for it. I tried for two years to try to get my school to teach programming in C++ or even pascal, so long as it was on a PC, and they wouldn't because it was to expensive to get a site licence for MSVC or Borland, and they coudn't get support for any of the free compilers. Maybe you guys have had better experiences, but from mine I'd say that just cause it's free doesn't mean schools will use it.

Author:	Mr. Glib [ Mon Nov 15, 2004 12:56 pm ]
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templest wrote: My CompSci teacher play Counter-Strike and Quake. C'mon, that's awsome. Really? Shouldn't he be spending every waking moment breathing, sleeping, eating curriculum?

Author:	wtd [ Mon Nov 15, 2004 2:30 pm ]
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Cornflake wrote: wtd wrote: However, today is very different from then. Open source has resulted in widespread availability of good compilers and interpreters. Most schools wont use open source software unless they can get someone to provide support for it. I tried for two years to try to get my school to teach programming in C++ or even pascal, so long as it was on a PC, and they wouldn't because it was to expensive to get a site licence for MSVC or Borland, and they coudn't get support for any of the free compilers. Maybe you guys have had better experiences, but from mine I'd say that just cause it's free doesn't mean schools will use it. Perhaps not, though the problem in that case might very well have been a lack of standards in either of those two languages. Schools often don't like teaching languages if they think what they're teaching will soon be irrelevant. In either case, the presence of good open-source compilers, and information online means you can teach yourself.

Author:	md [ Mon Nov 15, 2004 4:27 pm ]
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Erm... what lack of standards... C++, and pascal both have strong standards, and are certainly not soon to be irrelavent... FYI MSVC = Microsoft Visual C++, Borland = Borland C++

Author:	wtd [ Mon Nov 15, 2004 5:37 pm ]
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Cornflake wrote: Erm... what lack of standards... C++, and pascal both have strong standards, and are certainly not soon to be irrelavent... Yes, but those standards are still relatively new, and are not necessarily well implemented by many compiers. Both of the compilers you mentioend are not strong on standards compliance.

Author:	md [ Mon Nov 15, 2004 8:43 pm ]
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Not to get off topic but... The reason the school didn't buy MSVC or Borland was because it would have cost too much (so the school claimed), and the school wouldn't use an open source compiler because of the lack of professional support for the open source compilers. The schools problem was NOT with the languages (as they were using pascal) it was with the lack of PROFESSIONAL (as in they pay for it) support. Anyway my point was not about the development enviroments themselves, but the lack of support for free ones, and schools reluctance to trust anything free.

Author:	wtd [ Mon Nov 15, 2004 9:15 pm ]
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Well, that's silly. Why would you need "support" for a compiler?

Author:	Tony [ Mon Nov 15, 2004 9:19 pm ]
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what if it umm... doesn't compile something haha, silly schools

Author:	md [ Mon Nov 15, 2004 10:05 pm ]
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Something I've noticed about the world: If it doesn't make sense people will do it.

Author:	bass_maniac [ Fri Nov 19, 2004 12:42 pm ]
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I'm in the grade 11 compsci course and so far all we've done is look at websites or whatever. Our teacher has been teaching Turing to the 8 or so people who didn't take TIK last year. As far as I can see, that was they're choice, not mine. If they wanted to learn Turing they should have taken TIK. Seriously, it should have been a prerequisite. My teacher is trying to teach 10 months of grade 10 Turing into 2 months of grade 11 Turing and he's expecting these students to get. Two months into the year and I've only just begun learning functions. I think it would have been better for both those who have taken TIK and those have not, to have made TIK a prerequisite. [/rant]

Author:	wtd [ Fri Nov 19, 2004 2:53 pm ]
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bass_maniac wrote: I'm in the grade 11 compsci course and so far all we've done is look at websites or whatever. Our teacher has been teaching Turing to the 8 or so people who didn't take TIK last year. As far as I can see, that was they're choice, not mine. If they wanted to learn Turing they should have taken TIK. Seriously, it should have been a prerequisite. My teacher is trying to teach 10 months of grade 10 Turing into 2 months of grade 11 Turing and he's expecting these students to get. Two months into the year and I've only just begun learning functions. I think it would have been better for both those who have taken TIK and those have not, to have made TIK a prerequisite. [/rant] Head into the tutorials section and get a head start, then. If you're bored, there's no rule saying you have to learn as slowly as everyone else.

Author:	w00t [ Wed Dec 15, 2004 9:01 pm ]
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Hmmmm.... Well besides the fact that after 2 years of badgering my school to have Comp Sci , they are cutting out from Gr. 12... WTF! How the hell am i suppose to get the requirements to get into university if my "" cough cough "" Technologically Focused "" cough cough"" school wont support the stuff i need.. now i need to take a grade 12 course in night school... Thanks Alot there Government

Author:	Paul [ Wed Dec 15, 2004 9:09 pm ]
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Its actually dependent on if there are enough people interested in taking the course, and if there is a teacher available to teach it.

Author:	templest [ Wed Dec 15, 2004 9:47 pm ]
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Not to mention you don't need CompSci as a background in order to get into anything technology related into University. All you need is math, lots of it, and you have to do exeedingly well.

Author:	md [ Wed Dec 15, 2004 11:06 pm ]
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Well, to get into waterloo at least you could subsitute a University level course with the ICE course, so it could be seen as a requirement... Anyway like templest says just do really well in math and you'll stand just as good a change at getting in.

Author:	Drakain Zeil [ Wed Dec 22, 2004 4:02 pm ]
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You really can't say your class sucks, unless you goto my school... or worse. Atleast you are taught things. My teacher doesn't know what the following are/do (language is turing): \n sockets functions (because we can only use procedures.... t here is no such thing as a function) +=, -=, *= etc... includes the GUI stuff fork processes hex most of the programs I write The list goes on... She says the only time we can use a 2-dimentional array is when we need a tabel of data, and it must go (rows, colums). starting at 1. I put a huge rant about it in my blog, it was angsty. Anyway... One of the staff members here already say it (I'm new, I don't know anyone here), learn ahead by yourself. You'll be able to wow everyone. Make a network game of battleship eventualy, most teachers will let you do anything if you programed it yourself.

Author:	McKenzie [ Wed Dec 22, 2004 4:51 pm ]
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If you are talking grade 11, most of those don't need to be taught (functions are vital however) to understand fundamental computer science concepts. Some of them I feel actually get in the way. That said, it would be nice if she knew about them well enough to tell you to steer clear.

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