• arctanthrope@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    I’m sure these topics become relevant at some point, but I’m doubtful that it’s absolutely necessary to address them in an intro course. how does leftist ideology help kids understand what a while loop does

    like, literacy can do all of these things too, that doesn’t mean you have to introduce those concepts at the same time as the abc’s

    • Dejected Warp Core@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      The distinction here is programming vs computer science. You’re correct that it’s not strictly necessary, but it really depends on the area of study. Please allow me a small rant about the distinction - this isn’t directed at you.

      Programming, honestly, could be taught like a trade. It’s a skillset and a craft, with best practices and even regulations in some industries. But one doesn’t need to know anything about how we got here or the fundamentals that make a computer work electronically, in order to write code.

      Computer Science necessarily tracks back through the history of computing, in order to provide a grounding in how all this stuff ticks. You can’t talk about Babbage without Ada Lovelace, you can’t talk about Alan Turing without what the government did to him, and you can’t bring up ARPANET or the internet without talking about Berkley techno-hippies. Every step of the way are people taking capitalist and government interest and subverting it to meet more worldly and socialized goals. Everyone in this story has an agenda and, shocker, the smartest people tend to dominate in this field and reliably don’t fuck with conservative nonsense.

    • JasonDJ@lemmy.zip
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      3 months ago
      basket = []
      for pos in billionaires: 
          if pos not in basket: 
      -       basket += guillotine(b)
      +      basket += guillotine(pos)  # Corrected iterable naming