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• Monday, September 18, 2006 04:51 PM

  Why Johnny can't code

  The world has always moved from the particular to the general or more specificly from "bottom up' to 'top down'. But I will agree, I learned this by studying computer programming. I am not a programmer but got a Masters in the stuff and spend 4 years in computer sales and saw stuff from a very high level. A lot of it bad I will admit. But back to 'bottom up vs 'top down'. This is controversial at the least. This is simply the calculator problem that math teachers were screeming about years ago and apparently succummed to as I am now reading that we need to stop using the calculator to teach kids math and go back to teaching basics like the singapore math teaching style. But then the math teaching style in our schools seem to waffle back and forth every 20 years or so. Same thing for computer programming. Do they need to learn the low level stuff any more? Abstractions like OOP seem to say not. Because only a very few programmers need to know OOP in its classic style. The rest of the programmers will just use what these OOP programmers wrote for them. A la Visual Basic, Delphi and a host of others. So, I have contradicted myself in this article. 'Bottom up' for the math teaching folks and 'top down' for the computer folks. You be the judge. As I have stated, it is a controversial subject.

  —Elkin Beck
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