Paper Info
Title
Keynote address [summary]: Education before training
Abstract
The first quarter century of computing has produced a small army of obsolete or obsolescent programmers - although most of them are still employed because their supervisors seldom understand that they are not competent. The cause of this obsolescence is only partly the rapid rate of change of computer technology and science; more important is the undereducation or bad education of many people who have entered our - and the term is used loosely - profession. Training can help but it won't solve the problem. Too many of these people are really untrainable because they lack the educational underpinnings which would enable them to learn new knowledge and techniques. Since the underlying basis of any training or retraining program should be a sound educational base, it is vital that we attempt to avoid the mistakes of the past and present by better educational programs in the future. The first course in computer science is vitally important in this respect; attitudes and orientation which result from this course will help - or plague - the programmer throughout his career. The crucial questions about such a course are: - Does it introduce the student to computer science as well as to a programming language? - Is the programming content taught with a breadth of view rather than narrowly focussed on one language? - Does the approach to programming stress principles and good technique rather than a haphazard, cookbook approach?
Year
DOI
Venue
1974
10.1145/800151.804883
SIGCPR '74 Proceedings of the twelfth annual SIGCPR conference
Keywords
DocType
Citations 
bad education,educational underpinnings,programming content,computer technology,keynote address,cookbook approach,programming language,computer science,better educational program,sound educational base,programming stress principle,rate of change
Conference
0
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.34
0
1
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Anthony Ralston184.05