I teach PHP, Perl, and Ruby at CCSF, and every semester I hear some wild statements from students. Since most of my students are adults with degrees from prestigious universities, and many of them have achieved some success in fields unrelated to programming, they seem to think that their expertise in project management, or web design entitles them to easy success in an introductory programming course. Here are some of the things I hear.
- “My multimedia instructor told me that PHP will be easy to learn since I’m an HTML and CSS maven.”
- “I’m a Dreamweaver professional, so I’m sure PHP will be a no-brainer for me.”
- “My roommate works at Yahoo. I hear her talking to her friends about programming and I’ve picked up PHP by osmosis.”
- “I took a C course 20 years-ago, but I never use it. Anyway, I’m sure I’ll be fine with PHP.”
- “PHP is just shell scripting, so I’ll do the assignments using shell.”
- “I have a CS degree. I can write a compiler in assembler. I’ve programmed mainframes and I know 20 languages, including ALGOL and LISP. I can learn PHP in my sleep. Just one question, what is this HTML stuff?”
- “I’m going to build a website like YouTube or Google. I want to use PHP or Java. Which one should I learn?”
- “I don’t know anything about programming, but I’m very smart. And I work very hard. There shouldn’t be any problem. What is HTML again?”
My favorite way of learning anything new is definitely #3: osmosis. It rocks.
Keep hacking…
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HILARIOUS. i was in a pretty shitty mood before reading this post. i just had a good laugh — thx!
I'm finding out that calcification of my skull impedes osmosis. I guess your student must still be soft-headed.
it was interesting, Thanks Doug!
I am in a better mode now