Poet Ponders the Digital

If you decide that learning computer programming offers students much needed critical thinking (and job) skills, then the next question is which language(s) should be taught to which students. Computer programming changes, so any opinion I offer will be bad advice in a few years. What I offer below are my views at this moment, and they reflect my biases as a programmer. Suggestion One: C It's not flashy, it's not trendy, and it isn't the first choice of most programming courses. Yet, C is the language of operating systems, programmable controllers, and a lot of portable logic. When you learn C, it's easy to transport those skills to almost any modern language. C compilers are free, there are many integrated development environments (IDEs), and lots of resources are available for learning. You can code C in any text editor, too, and compile from a command line. For OS X and Windows, I suggest using the tools from Apple and Microsoft to learn C, C++, and either...

English: Flowchart example of calculating factorial N ( N! ). (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley Aug 4, 2014 Deadline September 2014 Issue Think, Code, Solve: Programming as Career Skill “Until I had to code it, I didn’t understand how many perspectives there are.” This spring, a group of my statistics students attempted to model the return on investment for various degrees at several colleges. To develop their model, they had to ask themselves what is “value” and how would they measure “return” for those students not seeking financial wealth. Developing their computational model, they learned more about what college provides society. Creating variables and functions, collecting data and creating output, the task of creating a computer program opened up new ways of considering the question these students sought to answer. Was a degree from one college better than the same degree from another school? Was one degree better than another? If you want...