🚀 go-pugleaf

Siegfried Heintze <72740.1365@compuserve.com> writes:

>I found out about this when one of my students in Phili PA was a Hi School 
>teacher trying to learn C++ to teach it to her students.

>I not sure I feel good about the people at Columbia (or whereever) 
>encouraging students to learn C++, but we have no control over that. The 
>fact is that by 1997 there will be an advanced placement exam in C++ and I 
>suspect very, very few high school teachers know C++ let alone C.

Please check your facts. The last word I heard from the College Board was that
the exam would be in C rather than Pascal. I don't know if they are 
emphasizing ANSI style, etc, but I don't think they are using C++.

>I also suspect that many hi schools cannot afford my regular prices plus 
>travel expenses to train their teachers

CS was never meant to be big on the high school AP level. It just is.

>Hmmm... that brings up another question: what platforms are most popular 

Apple ][ followed by Windows 3...

>likely is it that if they have Macs, that they will also have a C++ 
>compiler?

Around zero...

>Let me be more specific about the problems of teaching:  hi schoolers have 
>extremely short attention spans. They are, however, inspired by glamorous 
>topics like graphics. If you can show them an end result, such as a 
>graphics game, or bridge design for a bridge building contest, you can 
>inspire them to learn C++.

For a while. At some point, they will run into diminishing returns and you
are probably back where you started.

>Or does anybody believe that our best contribution would be to discourage 
>learning C++ until they are at the University?

Probably. Programming doesn't necessarily requrire more than a book, so talentedstudents could learn it regardless. They just wouldn't be eligible for
the respective credit...

--jf
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--jf