Is turing still useable in highschools?

[BigBear]

Today during our study period for our in class written exam tomorrow, I asked my teacher if we would be using turing next with Holt Software being dead etc. He said he didn't know what the board is recommending and that he likes teaching in turing.

I understand his reasoning because next year we will be learning object oriented programming and it is hard enough without getting bog down with new syntax but because I want to learn and use Python as soon as possible I looked up the new Curriculum for the 2009-2010 year.

http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/curriculum/secondary/computer10to12_2008.pdf

It doesn't specify which language(s) to teach the course in but..

On page 49 it says

Students will

"B2.4 use industry-standard programming tools
(e.g., structure chart, flow chart, UML [Unified
Modeling Language], data flow diagram, pseudo-
code) to represent the structure and components
of a computer program;"

As far as I know no one uses Turing outside of a high school learning environment.

On Page 67 it says

Students will

"C2.3 work independently, using reference mate-
rials (e.g., code snippets, sample programs, APIs,
tutorials), to design and write functioning com-
puter programs."

Even though this doesn't apply to me because the College level isn't offered at my school it still requires students to work with API's which turing doesn't allow access to.



I had a few more that I didn't fully understand that Gandalf explained in the irc like if turing was able to do the type conversion "casting in an inheritance hierarchy"

[Analysis Mode]

Given the new curriculum that's being rolled out, heck yes, you could use Turing. In fact, given the curriculum's simplicity, most teachers would prefer to teach with and most students would prefer to use Turing. At our school, we use C++ and Pascal.

[BigBear]

Analysis Mode @ Wed Jun 10, 2009 4:04 pm wrote:

and most students would prefer to use Turing.

Why?

[Euphoracle]

Easier to work with.

[Ultrahex]

From what I understand, there is many different types of people that take CS in high school. There are those who are there to pass the course and get a credit, there are those who want to learn about programming, and there are also those who just want to program "games".

The characteristics of these groups should really be a determining factor of choosing a programming language, even more so in an introductory CS course.

The reason Turing is most likely chosen is to do with the ease of use, self explanatory code, and easily expresses most introductory fundamentals of procedural programming. However for those individuals that like to see results there is also the graphics commands that are very simple.

I am sure there are many other languages that would be better to use but I am not sure whether there is any that satisfy all the groups as well as Turing is currently. I am sure there is but I am not aware of all programming languages.

You must also take in to account that how Computer Science is taught during highschool. A lot is often left out and they just take a look at the big picture and expect you to do something without getting into the finer details cause teachers do not want to explain this and confuse their students.

[DemonWasp]

First, it says "industry standard" in reference to programming tools. It doesn't really matter that nobody uses Turing, since there are about a dozen languages that are syntactically very similar - and trivial to switch to once you've learned how to program.

Second, Turing does have APIs. In fact, most of what students think of as "Turing" is just the Turing API (nearly everything in the index of the help is part of its API). While Turing does not directly expose the underlying Windows API, it does provide a whole library of functions and routines and data structures for students to use. In fact, every time you write a procedure, you're effectively adding to your own API within the program - you've added a method that abstracts away the logic of some operation into a single statement.

Finally, maybe Gandalf means something like this: http://compsci.ca/v3/viewtopic.php?t=20285 ?

[BigBear]

With API's look at the responses to questions like how do I change the mouse cursor in my program etc People always suggest using a vb script because turing doesn't have a built in command but it does have the ability to find the computer name etc.

[WOIKeller]

Although I understand what you are asking I have to agree (more or less) with Ultrahex. The one thing I don't agree with is the fact that there are people who want to program games. In my experiance they more or less just want to play games. They are much happier to simply play flash games then do any work. Not to help this is the fact that the teacher (although fun) is rather diorginised when it comes to the teaching of programing. He was initialy the teacher for ComTech but he has become over time the teacher of computer enginering and finally now CS.

Me and a friend of mine have been working on learning Java which is what the teacher said we would be learning and even now at almost the end of the year he keeps switching back and forth and more often then not back to Turring.

So just through my experiance of working with turring it is the optimal choice for teaching in highschool. But for those who are serious about programing, don't not learn on your own.