[Linux-aus] Re: High school computing texts

Andrew Donnellan ajdlinux at gmail.com
Wed Mar 21 17:43:20 UTC 2007


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.

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