> I've taught the exact same material at the start of a 3rd year CS PL > course, and the students there didn't find the syntax as easy as one would > hope for students with that much CS “experience”. In fact, unsurprisingly, > many find the syntax as hard as expected for having trained on very > different syntaxes (especially when they are unclear about the semantics > that were attached to those syntaxes). Although the switch to teaching the > start of the course with literally the same materials, with the students > knowing that, seems to have reduced resistance substantially (presumably > they don't want to be seen as complaining about something 1st year > humantities students are fine with).
This makes me wonder if some experienced programmers dislike simple syntax, not just because it is unfamiliar to them, but also because it is too simple to serve as an effective in-group filter. If humanities students are comfortable, we must raise the barrier to entry. ;) p.s. I just now stumbled across the Iron Ring obtained from the Ritual of the Calling of an Engineer. Probably everyone has heard of this except me, but if anyone hasn't: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ritual_of_the_Calling_of_an_Engineer -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Racket Users" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to racket-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/racket-users/87a7d1mv0t.fsf%40greghendershott.com.
