OSD600 Course Classroom discussion

During our class discussion about this course and the CPA program, I was really intrigued to learn how others felt about the way they were taught, what they had been taught, and the things they still wanted to learn about.

After reflecting a little on what was discussed, I grew curious about what every body's high school (or pre-Seneca) Computer Programming lessons/experience was like. Namely because I think my own previous classes seemed to give me some additional insight and view of the outlook on how most of the classes at Seneca fit in to what we would need to work as a programmer.

I was lucky enough to have a few real computer programming classes when I was in high school. I got to learn how to program in Turing, VB, and Java. Although that's not all I was taught. One thing i wish we did at Seneca, is have little interactive class programming sessions in a lab, where the teacher gives coding challenge to the students (ex. do operation in this many lines; or how do you do operation with only this/these functions?), and lets them hack at it for a part of the class. Then after the allotted amount of time, the teacher writes his answer/version up for everyone to see, and they compare and explain what the students did and how it works.

That was one of the interesting and apparently unique things that I got to do in my High School (Thornlea S.S.), but I also liked learning how to write pseudo code to plan out programs and algorithms on paper, so I could code programs an the like.

I wish Seneca would've had lessons like that in CPA, cause I've met so many students who always seem so lost or frustrated when trying to program. Learning how to program with or without pre-made code (although with specifications for the structure should be used with at least 1st years, if not 2nd) and knowing the difference between good and bad code (as well as how to make it) should be essential foundations for Student's programming knowledge at Seneca.

...and that's my little addition to CPA program discussion.