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from the does-it-count-as-a-foreign-language dept.
Mark Guzdial at ACM (Association of Computing Machinery) writes:
I have three reasons for thinking that learning CS is different than learning other STEM disciplines.
- Our infrastructure for teaching CS is younger, smaller, and weaker;
- We don't realize how hard learning to program is;
- CS is so valuable that it changes the affective components of learning.
The author makes compelling arguments to support the claims, ending with:
We are increasingly finding that the emotional component of learning computing (e.g., motivation, feeling of belonging, self-efficacy) is among the most critical variables. When you put more and more students in a high-pressure, competitive setting, and some of whom feel "like" the teacher and some don't, you get emotional complexity that is unlike any other STEM discipline. Not mathematics, any of the sciences, or any of the engineering disciplines are facing growing numbers of majors and non-majors at the same time. That makes learning CS different and harder.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday January 13 2018, @03:36AM (2 children)
Thought so. Hearsay isn't a better foundation than knowing a few rich people is. FWIW, I have experienced directly the effect I speak of in an experimental market (Foresight Exchange [ideosphere.com], I'm currently first place on that list and have been at least third place on that list since a few months after its creation in 1996). That market had three features which exaggerated the effect of greater wealth resulting in lower yields. First, playing field was very level, it's nearly zero sum, and number of market participants was relatively low. I noticed that it grew steadily more difficult to find credible investments. For example, I had to shift from market making and short term opportunity buys to long term investments (time frame 5-15 years), because my wealth had increased greatly (almost a factor of ten increase in net wealth).
Sure, real world markets are different. They are larger with extremely rich people having some ability to manipulate the rules of the markets and society to their advantage, but you still have the problem that it's far easier to find good investments of a given high yield at $1 million than it is at $10 billion. And you don't have to involve large numbers of people or bribe a bunch of politicians in your schemes for the smaller amount.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Sunday January 14 2018, @12:38AM (1 child)
So what you're saying the size of the world economy (or the part thereof one limits themselves to) is an upper constraint on wealth? That's both obvious, and isn't an argument against the fact that wealth disparities (when unconstrained) lead to an ever increasing share of the economy.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday January 14 2018, @04:59AM
I'm saying a lot more than just that.
It is however an argument against the claim that such wealth disparities can be exponentially increasing.