Programming (by the author’s opinion) is one of the most desired job by the persons who likes the informatics but a small piece of them have a deeply knowledge. There are many factors which affect and disappoint the people to take care for these directions. In the follow lines the author from his private experience and his research from the internet will try to refer some reasons, why the people don’t learn programming and sometimes dislike it.
First of it is common sense that students while have great interest about the internet , software and especially about computer games , finally don’t interest to acquire knowledge about programming . Also there are studies that show us that programming is, for most students, an unattractive activity. Students believe that programming as a difficult, tedious, boring, irrelevant and antisocial work (Kay, 2011). Also researches show us , the declining number of students learning programming in recent years .A good example is the Great Britain students which the number of them who learning programming have fallen to third in the last five years , creating corresponding voltage and universities (Wilson & Moffat, 2010).
Also there is the research of the Forte & Guzdial (2004) that have as result that the ” traditional” approach of teaching programming is disappoint than to attract students. With this opinion agree the author of this article and also believes that the program of studies in all of the levels of education have serious problem. This problem will be analyzed in the follow lines.
First of all in the high-schools programming seems to be studied such as something supplementary with mathematics. Off course mathematics is the “platform” of programming but in the case of these ages these kind of teach makes the programming unattractive and boring. Because of proof of these there are some researches that saw us that according to this traditional teaching approach , students are taught a general purpose language that does not meet their needs and ambitions and does not helps in understanding new concepts . In addition, the usual problems importing the programming uninteresting students, because they deal with the processing of numbers and symbols. Also some scientific reports refers that the programming languages used include several commands along with editorial details required forming a large volume of information that must be mastered by students , often forcing them to concentrate more on the technical details of a programming language rather than using basic programming principles.
An other problem is the programming as concept. Programming in the learning process, after the “hello word” includes many difficult concepts where is needed specialties from the teacher to transfer the knowledge into the students mind. Off course in high schools the problem isn’t so big because the concepts are not so difficult. On the other side it seems that there is the start of the problem because student doesn’t take a good idea about programming and don’t know the fundamentals and don’t learn how to work to acquire new knowledge and techniques. Today they have created some easy programming environments which try to make the programming more attractive.
The problem (by the author’s opinion) seems to be huger in the higher education. Many course programs –not only which are related with informatics- includes some programming languages. The serious problem is that in these courses the instructor does not explain deeply the fundamentals and doesn’t try to instruct the student how to work alone. In addition student in the programming works-projects try to find easy solutions to finish the job in small deadlines with specific goal to pass the course and not learn. Many times more explanatory instructor doesn’t go step by step but makes huge jumps.
Also some course programs (maybe) do not give the opportunity to the student to analyze the techniques in one specific programming environment. Apart the academic or professional training an other serious problem for learning programming is that the user many times can’t afford the problem of syntax and design error which make the to create disappointment. Many user cant adjustment many things about the “behavior” of the programming environment. A good example is author (me).Java is a powerful language but it works with to different programming environments (Eclipse and Netbeans).So user must choose an other language for program writing. The problem is which one must be choosing. So must be one direction from someone to give these guides. An other problem which people does not like programming is that today there is the trend that people don’t like to get tired their mind so try to use some applications which not need programming code for the development Last but not least it must be referred that programming many times does not need only strong work and knowledge but it is needed physical trend and talent by the person who want to makes higher level programming applications. These talent can’t be acquired by technical ways and manners and unfortunately there aren’t many people who own it.
To conclude this essay the main problems about the diffusion of programming in publics seem to be the a) educational system, b)the difficulty in adjustment into programming environments and c) the lack in talent in this area and the reluctance in strong work in this area. In the future the educational system must reconsider some things about programming and must be found some ways from the leaders of informatics to encourage people to find interesting the programming.
This is essay has been written in the framework of MOOC:Programming for Everybody (Python)
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