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From: shebs@utah-cs.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: Re: software engineering
Message-ID: <4502@utah-cs.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 17-Apr-87 14:41:26 EST
Article-I.D.: utah-cs.4502
Posted: Fri Apr 17 14:41:26 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 18-Apr-87 06:36:49 EST
References: <340@ndsuvax.UUCP> <1986@cwruecmp.UUCP> <4428@utah-cs.UUCP> <4429@utah-cs.UUCP> <1188@ssc-vax.UUCP>
Reply-To: shebs@cs.utah.edu.UUCP (Stanley Shebs)
Organization: PASS Research Group
Lines: 25

In article <1188@ssc-vax.UUCP> dickey@ssc-vax.UUCP (Frederick J Dickey) writes:

>Consider an analogy with reading and writing. Most people can read. That seems
>to be a fairly easy skill to pick up. Most people can't write (ever try to
>read your average tech report?). Is teaching programming like teaching reading
>or teaching writing? I suspect there are a lot of similarities between 
>writing and programming. To write something, you have to know what you are
>going to say and how you are going to say it. To program something, you
>have to know what the program is supposed to do and how to do it.

(Hi Fred!) I agree completely, though your "can't write" presumably means
"can't write coherently", at least going by the average Boeing document :-).
You don't mention the situation where students can write without being able
to read, rare in grade school natural language, near-universal in college
CS courses.  If reading is easier to pick up, then wouldn't it be better
pedagogy to start off with reading and introduce writing a little later?

Many professional writers seem to do what is to me an incredible amount of
reading, and in fact the best programmers I know also read quite a bit of
each other's code.  In fact, not too long ago somebody in this group was
declaring that they learned C by studying "larn" code...

>=======> Fred

								stan