[Year 12 SofDev] Pondering SD U3O2

[Charmaine Taylor]

Yes, but they're  usually right, aren't they!!

Charmaine Taylor
Sunbury Downs College

Mark Kelly wrote:

> Too right, Mr T-A.  I have kids ranging from "What does a keyboard 
> look like?" to "I program PHP in my sleep."
>
> It's hard to cater for all levels of skill and experience.
>
> Most of *my* programming is "classic" - i.e. I spent up to 20 hours a 
> day churning out code in BASIC, C, 6502 and Z80 assembly code, and 
> some machine code ... until I discovered girls.
>
> I found the intricacies of female logic were way more convoluted than 
> Shuffle, Bubble and Shell sorting algorithms.
>
> Female algorithms include the wildcard "Because I SAID SO" assertion, 
> which pretty much messes up any classic logical construct.
>
> :-)
>
>
> Mark
>
> Timmer-Arends wrote:
>
>> Hello Kevork
>>
>> At the risk of being picky, the study design doesn't use the term 
>> 'model' in this context - that was Adrian providing one 
>> interpretation of how to approach the task. It doesn't preclude 
>> writing 'real' programs.
>>
>>> I am not sure if I am a little naive here , but what is so special 
>>> about "modelling" a program to run on a mobile device ?
>>> What skill set is required to model this task apart from 
>>> understanding that the mobile device has a smaller screen area ?
>>
>>
>> Many of the students I taught found writing any kind of program 
>> difficult and gave little or no thought to screen design - especially 
>> if the program only required 3 textboxes and a few labels placed 
>> somewhere in the vast real estate of a standard monitor. The portable 
>> device constraint would at least force that issue.
>>
>> Also, just because the program the students write may never run on an 
>> actual portable device, that doesn't make it any less real - it still 
>> has to do everything the 'real' program has to, so the students still 
>> have to write the same 'logical' code, although not necessarily the 
>> same 'physical' code.
>>
>> It seems to me that part of the issue here is the large difference in 
>> ability and experience among students that the study design has to 
>> cater for: my more or less rank beginners through to your highly 
>> experienced student programmers. And, as it has been since VCE IT 
>> started, we have the tough job of catering for and giving achievable 
>> challenges to that range of students.
>>
>> Regards
>> Robert T-A
>> Brighton SC
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>>
>>
>