taking programming courses when you are not out of high school?

[x-ecutioner]

is there any way i could take a college course on programming in say PHP or C++ at a college?
why dont they let high school students take them?
im currently 16 and reside in mississauga, ontario.

i took a course on web development as a kid but it was pretty bs. Sir, are we going to do any html? "nooo... we'll be using html". i was so pissed. like really? dont teach us the damn easy language teach us the program taht can do the thinking for us...

can anyone recommend any alternate courses for programming?
or a way to get into a college course (am i allowed to?)

thanks

[Dan]

When i was in high school i took coures in C, C++ and java at a local college.

I blive it was niagara college.

They where webbased so that might have helped, but it took some phone calls to the registiers office. They noramly don't have a problem with it as long as the class does not have a waiting list and is not full.

[x-ecutioner]

oh so you mean by some phone calls
like u had to call them up a bit and ask for some leniency?
do you know if it varies by college?

[x-ecutioner]

also,

did you find these courses more insightful and useful than a typical apress book on the language?

[Drew416]

Why do you have to take a course? I don't think it will give you any major benefit and will only take $s out of your pocket. Just go to the public library in your city and take out a book on the programming language you are interested in. You will learn more and at a faster pace that way then taking some course at college. You will also have the choice to pick a language rather then being forced to work with the language the college uses (Java in most cases)

[jbking]

x-ecutioner @ Wed Mar 18, 2009 10:39 pm wrote:

i took a course on web development as a kid but it was pretty bs. Sir, are we going to do any html? "nooo... we'll be using html". i was so pissed. like really? dont teach us the damn easy language teach us the program taht can do the thinking for us...

Maybe I'm missing something but there is a distinction to be made between using a language and doing a language, IMO:

Did you mean to want to write your own HTML parser that would interpret HTML and render it on the screen? This would be like writing your own version of Firefox, Chrome or Internet Explorer to some extent and I doubt any beginner programmer could easily jump into this and get it done quickly and properly. This to my mind is "doing HTML" and wouldn't be that easy unless one just blindly downloads and uses the existing open source of a browser.

Did you mean to want to write your own HTML pages that an already existing browser would render? This to my mind is "using HTML" and is quite different as you are writing out the HTML and letting whichever browser you want to use to handle how to show this and that.

Now, do you see the difference here that I see? The latter is something I think most people could learn in a week or two for a basic "Hello World" page while the former could take weeks if you think about how many different tags have to be interpreted in understanding ALL of HTML which would include embedding things like flash, silverlight, quicktime, and other plug-ins besides the relatively simple text manipulations. Or did I misinterpret what you wrote?

[Dan]

x-ecutioner @ 19th March 2009, 1:20 am wrote:

oh so you mean by some phone calls
like u had to call them up a bit and ask for some leniency?
do you know if it varies by college?

It's been a long time so i am not sure what it is like now but it can't hurt to ask. If it is a web based course the college does not nessarly have to be close to you but there is noramly a wirten exam so you need to go some where to write that.

x-ecutioner wrote:

also,

did you find these courses more insightful and useful than a typical apress book on the language?

Honestly no. Tho some peoleop learn better form courses and it motivates them to learn more then just reading a book.

[Prabhakar Ragde]

Taking a course on programming in language X is a little like taking a course on the controls of a new car. If you know how to drive, you can probably just read the manual in the glove compartment. If you're a beginning driver, or a poor driver, you're better off getting better at driving in general rather than spending your time learning about the controls of many different car models.

At the university level, none of our courses are about "programming in X". Not even the first one.

[x-ecutioner]

oh no no
i was referring to just writing simple html code, which I learnt in grade 4; my point i was making is that if you take courses on web development they'll teach you how to use dreamweaver; which is jsut lame. Why get the computer to think for you? But the reason i figiured college would interest me is because i dont have the discipline to learn from the book. But ive changed my mind because in all honesty computer science students should be used to sucking it up and enforcing discipline on themselves. i have to toughen it out and read the books on it. and why not save some money while im at it, as a student 200-500+ is a lot of money!

thanks guys.

[saltpro15]

I find books hard to learn from also The easiest way for me to learn programming is example code lol, I learned DP and the Bfs/Dfs's just from looking at other people's DWITE code and recognizing the patterns, and then Wiki to learn the theory behind it of course

[jbking]

Ugh, I feel old now... I didn't learn about HTML until I was in university in ~1994 or so and never had a formal course in web development. The software development material from my Computer Science courses has been quite helpful but there have been some changes from what I learned which was mostly under Waterfall to using things like Agile, Scrum, XP, TDD, and others. Programming courses could help with some basic programming ideas, e.g. the basics of taking input, processing it and output the results applied to many different problems.

While I do understand your point in terms of some basic courses not necessarily helping you learn how to code, if you don't want the computer to do any work for you, try writing "Hello world!" in a program in machine language using binary or Hexadecimal code values. That is rather painful and tedious, which is why I can be happy for the slew of things that Microsoft Visual Studio, msbuild and other tools can do to take rather high-level code and turn it into something a server can understand.

Figuring out how you learn is something I'd highly recommend if you haven't already done so. If a book doesn't work, then try to get a programmer buddy or mentor to give you 1:1 face time with code and see if that helps get you into it, or maybe joining a local club will work.

[Joel92]

Drew416 @ Thu Mar 19, 2009 1:33 am wrote:

Just go to the public library in your city and take out a book on the programming language you are interested in.

What he said ^^


Believe it or not, the local library is a great resource. I decided to see if they had any books on programming about 3 months ago or so and I was suprised with the selection they had. It's worth the trip down, and it's free as well.

[btiffin]

old guy opinion piece
I find nothing wrong with the idea of taking courses for programming. It is a bit of a lottery in that you may know more than the instructor, but maybe not. And if not, they may well lead you away from mistakes. "Thinking" you know something and knowing something can be completely different sometimes.

For instance, take a look at some of the C++ source code people produce. A few hours of instruction can correct a lot of misunderstanding. Not to disrespect those code authors, just pointing out that even one tidbit of information picked up in a $200 course can be carried forward through a lifelong career. With the knowledge that going in, you cannot predict what (if any) the tidbit or tidbits may be.

Cheers

[saltpro15]

Joel92 @ Thu Mar 19, 2009 wrote:

Drew416 @ Thu Mar 19, 2009 1:33 am wrote:

Just go to the public library in your city and take out a book on the programming language you are interested in.

What he said ^^


Believe it or not, the local library is a great resource. I decided to see if they had any books on programming about 3 months ago or so and I was suprised with the selection they had. It's worth the trip down, and it's free as well.

lucky, my library has one book on programming and it's about visual basic. just to clarify visual basic == Satan -.-

[Joel92]

saltpro15 @ Thu Mar 19, 2009 7:42 pm wrote:

lucky, my library has one book on programming and it's about visual basic. just to clarify visual basic == Satan -.-

Hehe ^


To the OP

Here are some courses from university of Berkeley Computer Science which can be very useful, and hopefully give you the best of both worlds while saving you a bit of money.

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=6879A8466C44A5D5 CS 61A: The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Science
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=4BBB74C7D2A1049C CS 61B: Data Structures - Fall 2006
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=1777A89066B1D71D SIMS 141 - Search Engines

Oh who could forget, here's some Rails stuff aswell http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=ucberkeleyevents&view=videos&query=Ruby

You have about 39 hours of video per each course, so enjoy I hope it helps.


Regards,
Joel