[Linux-aus] Re: High school computing texts

[Andrew Donnellan]

On 3/21/07, Glen Turner <glen.turner at aarnet.edu.au> wrote:
> It's entirely irrelevant for a course named "software design
> and development".  That field wouldn't be rocked if applications
> languages went back to using BCD or started to use bignums more
> widely, so knowing the details of the two's complement arithmetic
> used by most languages isn't necessary.

Perhaps an introduction to binary is good, but I haven't seen one
practical application of binary multiplication or (gasp) long binary
division, which I absolutely hate, nor can I understand.

In fact, the only program I've ever written that has had to deal with
binary is the Python script I wrote to convert decimal to binary and
write out full working to make my life easier.

>
> School courses can't teach everything about a subject. It
> isn't university where you can spend 3 to 7 years studying
> aspects of the same subject.  A school subject might give
> five contact hours on databases, a university course would
> give 30 to 70 contact hours.

Yep.

-- 
Andrew Donnellan
ajdlinuxATgmailDOTcom (primary)    ajdlinuxATexemailDOTcomDOTau (secure)
http://andrewdonnellan.com         http://ajdlinux.wordpress.com
ajdlinux at jabber.org.au             hkp://subkeys.pgp.net 0x5D4C0C58
            http://linux.org.au    http://debian.org
        Get free rewards - http://ezyrewards.com/?id=23484
        Spammers only === ajdspambucket at exemail.com.au ===