[2080] in Depressing_Thoughts
Re: 1.00
jik@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (jik@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Tue Apr 23 17:55:12 1991
People who teach programming should have the following
characteristics:
1. They should be excellent teachers. They should immediately be able
to understand the question that a student is asking, even when the
student doesn't quite know how to ask it.
2. They should be programming gods. If the students can ask a
question that they do not understand, they shouldn't be teaching.
The TAs in 1.00 match neither of these characteristics. In most
cases, they aren't very good teachers, and they aren't very good
programmers. At least, this has been my experience.
Complaining to the faculty laiasons or to the teacher isn't going to
do any good. The fact of the matter is that the civil engineering
department shouldn't be teaching C programming, which is hard enough
for computer science people to teach.
