Oct-23-2017, 08:22 PM
(Oct-21-2017, 02:22 AM)Skaperen Wrote: in many courses in college, i read ahead of the current level. i think many students who do have an interest in the subject do that. i did that to an extreme in physics. for one course i read the entire text before the first class. i think instructors/professors should give encouragement to a student that does that, not an F (unless assignment restrictions were clearly made and meant to have students explore certain alternatives).
On the other hand, trying to get students to think outside the box will help later on. If you immediately train people that there's a
max() function, for example, then later on, they might be hopelessly lost without a builtin function that already does what they need. And getting someone new to programming to think about how to solve the problem is much harder/important that just getting them to write code in a language (imo).I like to think about it in terms of other skilled trades. If you start by teaching HVAC by describing how a certain model can handle something fairly easily, then when they see any other model they might have no idea how to even start (bad example because I know nothing about hvac). Or if a pipe fitter was trained to use a certain tool to do the job, they might bungle the job when it comes to a tight space where that tool can't fit. Or if a doctor thought they needed to know everything, and never got a consult (!).