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From: marie@harvard.ARPA (Marie desJardins)
Newsgroups: net.college
Subject: Re: Computer Science in high school
Message-ID: <254@harvard.ARPA>
Date: Mon, 7-Jan-85 12:47:26 EST
Article-I.D.: harvard.254
Posted: Mon Jan  7 12:47:26 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 8-Jan-85 05:13:10 EST
References: <241@mss.UUCP> <14700006@uiucdcsb.UUCP> <753@gloria.UUCP>
Organization: Aiken Computation Laboratory, Harvard
Lines: 20

> > I once had a store clerk who was going to ADD the dimensions of a
> > mirror to compute the square footage.  Is this guy going to be help by
> > a computer?  Only if it makes him realise the beauty and import of math,
> > science, literature, philosophy, history and the like.  These are the
> > essentials of life, without which no man can claim to be wise.
> 
> This is a shallow view of education.  Do computer programmers care about
> the "beauty and import[ance] of math, science, literature ..."?  Not more
> than other people.  Computer programming is a _basic_ skill -- it does
> not require a knowledge of calculus, or number bases, or even the multi-
> plication table...

Yeah, but if this store clerk writes a simple program to calculate the
area of a rectangle by adding the lengths of the sides together, he
hasn't accomplished much, even if he can get the program to work.
In other words, what *useful* computer programming requires is a grasp
of what approach to take to solve a problem.

	Marie desJardins
	marie@harvard