SPAM-MED: Re: Time to upgrade my technique...

[Richard Gaskin]

Richmond Mathewson wrote:
> Is there anything INTRINSICALLY wrong with using
> fields instead of variables ?
> 
> This looks like whether one wants to eat one's dinner
> the British way (i.e. with an upside-down fork and cut
> it up as you go along) or the North-American way (cut
> everything up first and then eat it with the fork).
> 
> Admittedly using variable results in quicker programs
> than using fields, but surely this is not a
> shibboleth?
> 
> Teaching kids RR it is easier to use fields because
> the kids can see them (i.e. they resemble the cups
> with buttons in that I start with); most pre-teens are
> not terribly hot with abstract ideas.

I would agree that what you teach should depend on where the learner is 
on Piaget's scale of cognitive function.

But for adult learners, I usually teach fields for display and variables 
for computation.

Variables play a central role in the art of programming.  One could 
argue that it would be a disservice not to explain how to use them well.

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  Richard Gaskin
  Managing Editor, revJournal
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