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From: kwan@maui.cs.ucla.edu (Edmund Kwan)
Newsgroups: comp.edu,comp.lang.pascal
Subject: Re: CS-1
Keywords: beginning computer science course
Message-ID: <23855@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU>
Date: 11 May 89 18:34:47 GMT
References: <2130@iitmax.IIT.EDU> <2394@brahma.cs.hw.ac.uk> <206@psgdc> <1085@lafcol.UUCP> <1866@aucs.UUCP>
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Reply-To: kwan@cs.ucla.edu (Edmund Kwan)
Organization: UCLA Computer Science Department
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In article <1866@aucs.UUCP> 880716a@aucs.UUCP (Dave Astels) writes:
>In article <1085@lafcol.UUCP> ciriello@lafcol.UUCP (Patrick Ciriello II) writes:
>>
>>Absolutely.  Understanding the way to approach a problem and solve it is
>>much more important that learning the syntax of a particular language.
>
>This is fine for begining 'programmers' but they shouldn't be given the idea
>that you can't start coding until you understand the problem and its solution.
		      ^^^^^^
>If this was the case no research would ever get done.  In some fields (AI in
>particular) the problem becomes understood better by trying to solve it.
								^^^^^

Coding without understanding the problem & its solution(s) (Code and Fix 
Approach) is a no-no according to my Software Engineering class.  We should
definitely not teach beginning programmers to hack out a program in Pascal
rather than to design a solution and then implement it in Pascal.

Perhaps you are talking about prototyping?

Seems to me that students don't ever need to develop prototypes in their
classes (or maybe all they do is develop prototypes).