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I guess this community doesnβt want this kind of content, even if itβs the official dev blog
Lots of us
Also, who do you mean by βusβ? Programmers? Not all the kids in class want to be programmers, and this isnβt a programming class - itβs Computer Science. We cover topics like hardware, the Internet, Cybersecurity, the history of computers, data analytics, etc. Not only do not all of them want to be programmers, not even all of them want to be in I.T. - theyβre just, you know, interested in computers (or in some cases theyβre in the course because their parents think they should be in it - Iβve had a couple of those students). We only spend 6 weeks on programming (we spend 6 weeks on each topic), or sometimes we might do it twice and spend 12 weeks on it, and thatβs it for the year! You canβt teach Year 7 kids algorithms, pseudo code, basic programming concepts (variables, branches, and loops) and OOP as well in one year. Especially when not even all of them are interested in programming. Itβs just one topic we cover. OOP is something that shouldnβt be covered until at least Year 8, preferably Year 9 (by which stage students have decided if they want to continue on this path or not, and the ones we still have left we start getting more hard-coreβ¦ which is where the βusβ I presume youβre referring to come in).
have the experience of being the kid in that situation
Which kid? The gifted one, the one who didnβt understand loops and used 20 variables for 20 iterations, the one who didnβt understand how to write pseudo code, the one who was dyslexic,β¦?
I learnt python in secondary school
Which Year? I didnβt say it wasnβt appropriate for high school, I said it wasnβt appropriate for Year 7 as a first programming language.
Oh, I should clarify that. Teaching Python was decided for us by admins. The course material MAY have been designed by a teacher, but then also it may have been designed for Year 9 say. Itβs inappropriate to be teaching it to Year 7 as a first proper programming language, but thatβs what we had to do (otherwise then we would also have to make all our own resources to do it, and donβt forget at this point that I didnβt know how to program in Python myself yet! So yes, I had to use the already made resources, which had OOP in it).
P.S.
teach them c# and I guarantee they will be making executables to cause trouble
No, youβre overestimating the students ability. I taught C# in coding club (they were mostly around Year 8), and it was a struggle just getting them to understand basic programming concepts (imagine having to explain MVVM to them - theyβre not good at understanding abstraction) - they wouldnβt have had a clue how to turn it into a malicious exe.
Is the fact that C# produced executables also a problem?
Trust me, the conversation never even gets that far.
just not installing the python runtime on them
We werenβt! We were using repl.it (or something very similar). I donβt know what the story was at other schools, other than many other teachers also wanted C# but had to do Python (it was when I came across this that I finally accepted defeat in trying to get another language in instead of Python. I wanted to start with Pascal and then do C#. In the end I had to do HTML and Python. i.e. the status quo).
Generally agree with you that teachers should be able to choose at least one of the languages to teach.
Weβre supposed to be able to choose both languages, but school admins are taking away one of our choices.
if it includes JavaScript?
I wouldnβt do that at the same time as HTML - maybe later, separately. As Iβve said, as teachers we only teach one concept at a time.