xkcd source This post began as a response to a teacher who posted in the Unity Teach Community Facebook group that he had been advised by college video game teacher that object oriented programming (OOP) is a key skill needed for success in collegiate video game programming. OOP was, in part, a reaction to increasinglyContinue reading “Untangling the Meaning of Object Oriented Programming”
Category Archives: Uncategorized
A Warm Up for Capture the Flag
I have been using Capture the Flags (CTFs) in my classrooms since 2013 and been training teachers in their use since 2017. While I wholeheartedly appreciate the staggering amount of work picoCTF and Carnegie Mellon do and did, I always felt that there was a learning curve issue they were having difficulty meeting. At theContinue reading “A Warm Up for Capture the Flag”
Why You Shouldn’t Teach Recursion (Yet)
Picture taken from this presentation My esteemed colleague Shriram Krishnamurthi has written an interesting draft blog post on How Not to Teach Recursion that details some of the common, perhaps misguided, ways computer science teachers teach recursion. Let me start by saying that I agree with much of his criticism. Fibonacci is a contrived exampleContinue reading “Why You Shouldn’t Teach Recursion (Yet)”
How I Teach vim
The positive response to my post about “Why I Teach vim” has been extremely appreciated and the most common question I have received is “OK, but how do you teach vim? This is a much more difficult question to answer in a blog post as I have repeatedly found trying to explain teaching methods inContinue reading “How I Teach vim”
Why I Teach vim
The why of why people use vim has been covered fairly extensively, so I thought I would spend a little time explaining why I teach vim to my high school students, even in 2020. It all began when I was assigned a mixed class of ninth through twelfth grade students in computer science just afterContinue reading “Why I Teach vim”
Last Meeting – Bill Atkinson and HyperCard
Guest blog post by Jay Michlin, circa 1987 (used with permission). A recounting of a presentation by Bill Atkinson at the Stanford Macintosh User Group (SMUG) HyperCard. Bill Atkinson. The auditorium was packed and everyone stayed until the end.What more need be said? I considered stopping this month’s report right here, because the first paragraphContinue reading “Last Meeting – Bill Atkinson and HyperCard”
public static void whaaaat?
This post is inspired in part based on a question (Facebook account and membership to the group required) that came up on the AP Computer Science A Teachers Facebook group (please consider joining if you teach Java or AP CS A). For those without Facebook access, the question amounts to “What does each part ofContinue reading “public static void whaaaat?”
Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes? – Who Will Guard the Guards Themselves
One of the many advantages of running your own command line based Linux server is that you can easily set up web space for both you and your students. I like to take advantage of this to really bring home a point about phishing attacks and being ever vigilant. The purpose of this exercise isContinue reading “Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes? – Who Will Guard the Guards Themselves”
Hello World or Thank You Alfred Thompson
How it all began…. It must have been 2008. A year before that, I had been given the news that 50% of my music teaching load was being cut due to the economic crisis. My assistant principal offered me a drafting class. I said I can’t draw stick figures. What can you do? Well, IContinue reading “Hello World or Thank You Alfred Thompson”
ceos 