Learning Programming

PIEBALDconsult

Hence the desire to move it up.

Andy Brummer

Johnny J. wrote:

Throwing too much at people from the start can get them to give up...

Or even worse, think that everything has to be build with reflection, threading and WCF. *shudder*

Andy Brummer

One of the things missing in .net is something like Rails that puts intro projects and real world projects together. Without something simple that just kind of works like that, databases are very hard to grasp. It would be nice if .net had more of that kind of thing easily available. My intro to computing was print statements and then drawing lines and circles etc. in basic way back when, so my experience probably doesn't apply to this all that much. :-D

Curvature of the Mind

leppie

Just how many years do you have to do this per student? If 6 months or less, I would limit it to the first 3. I would cover C# first before diving into .NET. C# as a language is not that hard to grasp. The .NET framework OTOH, that can take many years to master.

((λ (x) `(,x ',x)) '(λ (x) `(,x ',x)))

BrainiacV

You failed to throw in the kitchen sink :) Aside from "no programming experience", what does this person know? I've had to teach people who couldn't navigate Windows, so it would be nice to know a little more before I can competently critique. I've always gone for "This is a variable" followed by "These are control structures". But then again I'm an old fogey who doesn't quite trust drag and drop programming. I like to know what's going on under the hood and clue the student into the fact that's its not just magic. When things fail, you need to know why and how to fix them. I stress "get five lines of code to work before you try fifty." So early introduction to debugging and single stepping is essential. But again, I don't know the level of competency in your student. Good luck, Mr Phelps

Psychosis at 10 Film at 11

Al42

I agree with those who said, in essence, "to teach programming, you first teach programming". I think Wirth[^] is a good first step. Teaching a GUI, or a language, isn't giving them what they need to write code - which, after all is said and done, is necessary.

Bruce Patin

I have spent 20+ years teaching programming. Exactly how you attack this depends on your use of technologies. First of all, make sure that whatever the student learns can be quickly and immediately useful in some way and therefore fun. This is absolutely essential to retaining the material and driving curiosity. Second, do you mostly do web applications or Windows forms applications or simply database work? Which gives the student more of a chance to actually use it for something useful to them? For web apps, go straight to simple HTML pages. Visual Studio is optional at this point. The student can make his own web pages and learn how to style them. This will be enormously useful in the future, when trying to understand and get around ASPX limitations or developing MVC apps. Once the student knows simple HTML, he/she can start learning programming with a bit at a time of Javascript on the side. For databases, I would recommend (shudder) starting with Microsoft Access, or some other platform that is available to the student, as a learning tool. Access also gives the student the ability to make some simple forms. Not only will this give the student a platform to immediately make something useful, but introduce concepts that are needed for everything else, even though the student will have to unlearn a few things afterward. If you don't use Access, but the student has access to databases that are useful, a reporting tool, such as Microsoft SQL Reporting Services, or whatever your company uses, would be a good place to start. For Windows Forms apps, you will probably need to combine that with a simple introduction to either file or database manipulation, in order to make sure that something useful to the student can be quickly constructed. Unless you have already started with databases, I would recommend file manipulation first, as being simpler to introduce. Once you have done the above, or if you do not do Windows Forms apps, you can get into developing C# web applications, using as simple code as you can get away with while still having the objective of doing something useful.

David Lario

With my company I been pushing for all my guys who have basic computer experience to start using it as a tool to make their life more efficient. I think one of the best tools for the introduction to programming VBA. Yes I know its not considered as a true programming language, but it has some good merits. 1. Free. It is included in most if not all Microsoft software and some others. Its a good way to actually see if you are interested in programming but not have to shell out the cash to find out. 2. Record Macro - You know what you want but not sure how to start programming it. Press the record button the program will attempt to record your steps in a program type fashion. Making macros is pretty much the fastest way to program something without having vast programming skills and get immediate results which is important for beginning programmers. 3. Tons of information and good examples on the internet. (That pretty much goes for anything now-a-days) 4. Making the transition to Visual Studio or Databasing (through Access) is not such a big step. 5. The editor/debugging is actually not that bad. Dave

patbob

you need to teach them basic programming concepts before you get into framework/library, OOP and other various programming technologies. Think variables, variable assignment, if statements, loops and then move on to advanced (!) topics like functionsand function parameters. Real world apps make terrible basic programming assignments because of all the distracting stuff you have put in there. Error checking, well designed code, UI design, etc. At least, that's what I learned back when I used to teach beginning programming to non-programmers years ago.

patbob

ely_bob

I think you should be careful with the "threading" option.. it's not something that get used very frequently outside of Lind, or delegates.. the System.Threading namespace would probably be out of scope.

I'd blame it on the Brain farts.. But let's be honest, it really is more like a Methane factory between my ears some days then it is anything else...
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"The conversations he was having with himself were becoming ominous."-.. On the radio...

Stonkie

I think you need to make it goal oriented... Something like this : 1. Create a console application that prints its first command line argument. (the basics) 2. Make it print all of them and print a warning if no argument are passed. (flow control) 3. Make it parse all arguments as int and sum them. (use variables, understanding types int/string) 4. Make it take the first argument as a mathematical expression, split by operators (+ and -) and apply them. (advanced work with data) 5. Declare an interface Expression that define a GetResult and a class for Number, Addition and Subtraction, then build an execution tree to get to the same result. (basic OO) 6. Make it work using Polish notation instead. (refactoring) 7. Implement Division and Multiplication with correct operation priority. (exploring OO) 8. Create a Windows forms UI for a calculator with a text box where the user can type an equation. (forms) 9. Parse this equation for parenthesis and operation priority and reformat it as Polish notation. (advanced data manipulation) 10. Pass this equation to the command line application previously developed and show the output. (how to look for functionalities in the framework and MS documentation) 11. Integrate the calculation code into the forms application as a separate project, add the dependency and make it work. (multiple projects, dependencies and refactoring) 12. Create a database in SQL Express and add a database for logging previous calculations with input and output. (database design) 13. Use a typed dataset or entities or whatever technology you want him familiar with to add one row to the table everytime a user presses "calculate". (simple inserts) 14. Use the database as a cache to bypass the calculator and retrieve the answer from the database if the calculation was requested previously. (simple queries and refactoring) 15. And from then on, he's ready to start fixing small issues or developing small chunks of functionality in your actual applications, either in pair programming or with constructive code review. The rest is experience! Btw, did you know about this? http://tryhaskell.org/[^]

Spectre_001

Part 1 is a good beginning. For Part 2 check out Rob Miles CSharp Yellow Book - a free PDF - Good coverage of the basics of programming in C#. You might also check out another free PDF book by Charles Perzold - DotNetBookZero. Very good, comprehensive coverage of C# programming, but it's a bit more advanced (geared towards C and C++ developers making the move to C#). If you pull from both, you should have all of the material you need to do a beginning and intermediate course in C# programming. Intro to SQL seems fine for Part 3. Part 4 - I believe I would make the Threading and Reflection intro level and save the advanced specifics for Part 5. Threading in particular is very difficult (even for advanced programmers) to do well. Keep everything in part 4 at the intro level. All you want to do here is give a basic understanding of all the options available. I would also consider adding intros for SDLC (Software Development life Cycle) and TDD (Test Driven Development). Part 5 - These should be individual advanced courses delving into all of the things you have an intro to in Part 4. You might also want to have available advanced courses in Software Design and "Best Practices". I would not have the student(s) work on anything I intend to use in a production environment until they are well into the courses for Part 5. Until then they will have no (or at best little) concept of good software design or programming best practices. At the very advanced level, you might want to make available cources in ORM (Object Relational Mappers, NHibernate and FluentNHibernate come to mind as a very mature ones), Object Databases - Perhaps Versant's db40, and frameworks such as the Spring.NET Framework and Microsoft's MVC Framework.

Kevin Rucker, Application Programmer QSS Group, Inc. United States Coast Guard OSC Kevin.D.Rucker@uscg.mil "Programming is an art form that fights back." -- Chad Hower

James Lonero

I might recommend Andrew Troelson's fine book on C# and have the student study on his own. If he has questions to ask you when he can.