Learn Programming in 1 Day

[Richmond Mathewson]

jbv wrote:

"sorry to be so abrasive"

Ha, Ha; nothing wrong with a bit of abrasion; I have
scars to prove it!

Love You All!

What really scares me are the folks who cannot cope
with a bit of abrasion.

I do like your

"Kill your fear of programming in 1 day"

Maybe "the 'P' word" should jump up on the shelf with
such other heros such as "the 'F' word" - however that
would be a wee bit too politically correct for the
likes of me, and

Real Programming is 'F-word' hard work :)

Now both you and I, and a fair few folk forbye can
take somebody else's work and tweak it about; that,
however, is not programming, that is only tweaking.

I, also, spent some time in the University of
Abertay's grey, depressing walls being "taught" Visual
Basic, and I well remember a young lassie of some 25
summers who could not even wrap her tongue round
English vocables (being fluent - or mayhap 'effluent'-
in gutter Dundonian Scots) asking me why her program
did not work even though she had copied what the
lecturer had "telt us"; and the answer was a simple as
this:-

You cannot teach programming by showing wains models
and having them tweak them.

Forbye, she did not understand what a FOR . . . NEXT
LOOP was because the lecturer had provided a model
with said loop in place and blethered something about
repeating itself until it was finished.

Now I teach programming to Primary Children; starting
with ye olde fashioned flow-charts on ye olde
fashioned black board and buttons and cups to
demonstrate how A = A + 1 is possible.

However, just like musicians; there are real pianists
(that is why my older son practices 4-8 hours a day!)
and Sunday-Afternoon-in-the-front-parlour pianists.
Similarly with people who make computer programmers;
however a Sunday-Afternoon-in-the-front-parlour
pianist will never, never be a Vladimir Ashkenazy or a
Daniel Barenboim.

And anybody who tells wee Jimmy he can be a great
piano player by doing half-an-hour a day and no
Solfeggio, Theory or Harmony should be hit over the
head with a brick!

Now who is being abrasive? But, face it, the world is
becoming mediocre, and
Sunday-Afternoon-in-the-front-parlour pianists are
being praised to the skies because they can belt out
"The Flower of Scotland" without an ounce of feeling!

I only wish I had the money and the time to attend the
"Learn Programming in 1 Day" course, where, without
trying in any way to be funny, I am quite sure I would
learn a lot.

And, further to that I would like to say that I think
it is an awful pity that people seem to have taken my
initial e-mail that initiated this series as an attack
on the course as such, when it was merely meant as a
'poke' at the daft title it was given. I have nothing
but admiration for Jacque and her colleagues, and
their efforts.

sincerely, Richmond Mathewson

____________________________________________________________

A Thorn in the flesh is better than a failed Systems Development Life Cycle.
____________________________________________________________


      ___________________________________________________________ 
Rise to the challenge for Sport Relief with Yahoo! For Good  

http://uk.promotions.yahoo.com/forgood/