Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!emory!att!rutgers!cmcl2!kramden.acf.nyu.edu!brnstnd
From: brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein)
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: Re: Against educational fads (was: math credit)
Message-ID: <8470:Dec1313:48:5190@kramden.acf.nyu.edu>
Date: 13 Dec 90 13:48:51 GMT
References: <Dec.5.16.27.30.1990.6922@paul.rutgers.edu> <15488@cs.utexas.edu> <16495@s.ms.uky.edu>
Organization: IR
Lines: 13

In article <16495@s.ms.uky.edu> morgan@ms.uky.edu (Wes Morgan) writes:
> Why not start encouraging students to program with
> "alternative" projects?  For instance, wouldn't an "interactive timeline"
> program have just as much validity as any History term paper?

No, it wouldn't. Programming experience does not substitute for writing
experience. The latter is far more important in the real world.

(My cynical side says that neither an ``interactive timeline'' nor a
history term paper is much more than an exercise in bull, but at least
writing bull is more of an intellectual challenge than coding it.)

---Dan