Commenting on "Coding to be mandatory in primary, early high school"
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/coding-to-be-mandatory-in-primary-early-high-school-20180817-p4zy5d.html
I wonder how many students will turn out to be good coders. During my early days, I was known as a programmer. Don’t get me wrong, I still like to be known as a computer programmer.
This is another burden to the young students, and almost all the primary school teachers are not trained to teach or guide the students.
Many people don’t understand what a computer bug can do a programmer. A computer bug is not something that spread disease like flu and cold, but it can cause undue stress to many young mind.
A bug is something coded incorrectly that causes the program to perform errornuosly, including terminating abruptly, doing things repeatedly that could not be stopped normally, or producing disastrous outcome.
A seemingly easy to fix bug is never easy to fix. Once a bug is removed, it may cause another to surface, and sometimes the so called simple bug can take days or even longer to fix.
The process of fixing the problem is known as debugging the program. There are tools available to debug the most obviously ones, but “life is not meant to be easy” especially for a programmer. Big programs can contain many thousands or more lines of instructions, and finding the culprit is like “finding a needle in a hay stack”.
Unfortunately, this is a drain to valuable resource for the schools, and a teacher cannot waste too much time helping the very frustrated students to debug the program.
Some schools are introducing 3D printing, and the equipment and materials used are very expensive. It is bad enough that some schools are forcing the students to buy computer in early primary years, and expenses just piling up after that. What if 3D becomes mandatory, and the students pester the parents to buy the equipment?
After helping students up to Year 5 last year, I know coding is definitely not for these students or under. It is not just my opinion, but my professional opinion with the backing of 50 years of hands-on programming experience.
Thank you for reading.
This is another burden to the young students, and almost all the primary school teachers are not trained to teach or guide the students.
Many people don’t understand what a computer bug can do a programmer. A computer bug is not something that spread disease like flu and cold, but it can cause undue stress to many young mind.
A bug is something coded incorrectly that causes the program to perform errornuosly, including terminating abruptly, doing things repeatedly that could not be stopped normally, or producing disastrous outcome.
A seemingly easy to fix bug is never easy to fix. Once a bug is removed, it may cause another to surface, and sometimes the so called simple bug can take days or even longer to fix.
The process of fixing the problem is known as debugging the program. There are tools available to debug the most obviously ones, but “life is not meant to be easy” especially for a programmer. Big programs can contain many thousands or more lines of instructions, and finding the culprit is like “finding a needle in a hay stack”.
Unfortunately, this is a drain to valuable resource for the schools, and a teacher cannot waste too much time helping the very frustrated students to debug the program.
Some schools are introducing 3D printing, and the equipment and materials used are very expensive. It is bad enough that some schools are forcing the students to buy computer in early primary years, and expenses just piling up after that. What if 3D becomes mandatory, and the students pester the parents to buy the equipment?
After helping students up to Year 5 last year, I know coding is definitely not for these students or under. It is not just my opinion, but my professional opinion with the backing of 50 years of hands-on programming experience.
Thank you for reading.
