💡𝚂𝗆𝖺𝗋𝗍𝗆𝖺𝗇 𝙰𝗉𝗉𝗌📱

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Joined 11 months ago
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Cake day: November 25th, 2023

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  • Sorry. Hadn’t occurred to me you may not be able to see it (usually it’s me who can’t see things others post! 😂 ).

    In a nutshell it boils down to the release schedule for .NET/C# - which people are paying to use - is too quick with too short support periods. He compares to another language, which is free (from memory I think it was Rust? I’d have to watch it again to see) which has the same short support periods, but is FREE. i.e. what are we paying for if we’re not getting support for any longer than something which has the same support period for free? He’s saying since MS is charging people for this, the support periods need to be longer, specifically security patches. e.g. if someone releases an app near the end of a period, then has only say 6 months before they have to upgrade it already, just to keep getting security patches. People don’t have the option to stay on their stable release for a decent amount of time, even though they’re paying for it. He just wants them to slow down the speed and increase the periods (we all know MS is all about pushing out new features over fixing bugs).





















  • Lots of us

    Also, who do you mean by “us”? Programmers? Not all the kids in class want to be programmers, and this isn’t a programming class - it’s Computer Science. We cover topics like hardware, the Internet, Cybersecurity, the history of computers, data analytics, etc. Not only do not all of them want to be programmers, not even all of them want to be in I.T. - they’re just, you know, interested in computers (or in some cases they’re in the course because their parents think they should be in it - I’ve had a couple of those students). We only spend 6 weeks on programming (we spend 6 weeks on each topic), or sometimes we might do it twice and spend 12 weeks on it, and that’s it for the year! You can’t teach Year 7 kids algorithms, pseudo code, basic programming concepts (variables, branches, and loops) and OOP as well in one year. Especially when not even all of them are interested in programming. It’s just one topic we cover. OOP is something that shouldn’t be covered until at least Year 8, preferably Year 9 (by which stage students have decided if they want to continue on this path or not, and the ones we still have left we start getting more hard-core… which is where the “us” I presume you’re referring to come in).






  • Is the fact that C# produced executables also a problem?

    Trust me, the conversation never even gets that far.

    just not installing the python runtime on them

    We weren’t! We were using repl.it (or something very similar). I don’t know what the story was at other schools, other than many other teachers also wanted C# but had to do Python (it was when I came across this that I finally accepted defeat in trying to get another language in instead of Python. I wanted to start with Pascal and then do C#. In the end I had to do HTML and Python. i.e. the status quo).

    Generally agree with you that teachers should be able to choose at least one of the languages to teach.

    We’re supposed to be able to choose both languages, but school admins are taking away one of our choices.

    if it includes JavaScript?

    I wouldn’t do that at the same time as HTML - maybe later, separately. As I’ve said, as teachers we only teach one concept at a time.


  • I think they introduced the programming GCSE the year after I did my A-Levels

    I was teaching the IGCSE, to students all over the globe.

    you can JUST learn the programming bit

    But NONE of the resources which have been provided to schools do it that way - they ALL use OOP. If that’s what your faculty has chosen to use, then that’s what you have to use. It comes back to what I’ve been saying all along - the schools are dictating to the teachers what they are to teach, and it’s NOT based on what’s best for the students educationally, but what has the least admin overhead for them. That’s the stupid reason that I had to learn Python - admin concerns!


  • P.S. the students aren’t going to have any tests where it matters until Year 10, and the curriculum even says that at least 2 languages must be taught (in my case we chose HTML as the second language, because…), and so even though many teachers would like to teach their students C#, the schools simply aren’t LETTING them do that. They don’t want the admin overhead that comes with teaching C#, so it’s Python and… nope, it’s just Python (and so then you have teachers opting for a second language like HTML, cos they can’t get their school/faculty to buy-in on teaching C#, simply because they don’t want the admin that comes with it. The fact that it’s a better language to learn isn’t even considered).