My high school taught Java, but I didn’t get OOP

Yes, the correct sequence of events - one thing at a time, basic programming, then OOP. :-)

Python is not that.

It’s not a lot of things, which makes it poor for a teaching language.

No problem. Feel free to ask me questions.

…and riding a bike is easy. Now go watch some kids who have never ridden a bike before and see how that’s working out for them.

Oh definitely! Different students have different learning styles - some learn by memorising rules (ROTE), some learn by understanding the rules (Constructivist), some are visual learners, some are better at learning in group activities, etc. - and we have to cater to them ALL, to keep them all engaged (here’s WHY we have this rule, here’s a video about it, here’s a group activity about it, here’s a worksheet to practise it). But I was referring to the TOOLS that we use with class. We can’t use a tool that the advanced students have no trouble with but the less adept students struggle with - we have to use a tool that the whole class can use, and that’s what I meant about catering to the lowest common denominator.

Also some (not all) schools have special classes for gifted and talented (G&T) students. And in fact one class I’ve had in my time is a class which was comprised of half the students had various learning difficulties (such as being dyslexic), though they weren’t told that (these days it’s all about trying to keep them in the mainstream as much as possible. So in this class the dyslexic student had a regular student sitting next to him for immediate help with reading anything, which left me free to only need to help him with actual educational issues).

My first language was Basic, and Pascal is definitely better than that as a first language (it’s what it was designed for).

That’s silly

Agreed.

This was at a university

As I said elsewhere, I had a much more sensible approach when I went to Uni - we learnt Pascal in first year, and then did OOP in second year, which follows the tradition of only teaching one concept at a time.

Well, I’m only speaking here for my experience with teaching the U.K. curriculum, but probably the same thing applies elsewhere. I know this much - as a teacher, it’s very frustrating!

Oh! I just remembered this video. If you wanna know how students can struggle with pseudo code, watch the video. I use this video when I teach algorithms (students are even worse at that than pseudo code).

It looks like pseudo code

P.S. as a teacher, I can tell you I have seen students who even struggle to write pseudo code. It’s like trying to teach them Greek (not all students, but some, and we need to cater to the lowest common denominator).

As it is, when we had to teach them HTML, the resources we were given were using PHP at the same time, so I scrapped that and just taught them HTML myself. We never teach more than one concept at a time, so I don’t know how these other things found their way into the curriculum/resources.

I just replied to someone else with the same question. Less can go wrong (but in either case a non-OOP language, like Pascal, is a much better starting point. You should only ever teach students one concept at a time).

See my comment

I, as a teacher, have had to learn several languages, but that’s not the dumb reason bit. The dumb reason bit was WHY I had to teach Python, which once I learnt it (so I cold teach it) I could see right away was NOT a suitable language for teaching to Year 7 (who up to now have only used Scratch). I was teaching the U.K. curriculum, and I found out that teaching C# was also allowed - still not ideal, but better than Python for learners -but pretty much all schools were teaching Python. When I dug into it I found I was far from alone in not wanting to use Python… and I also found out the reason schools were teaching Python. It was because from an ADMINISTRATIVE point of view it was much easier for the schools to have us teaching Python. In other words, the office-workers who didn’t have to teach it, only had to admin it, were forcing everyone to teach Python because they wanted the lower overhead that came with installing/maintaining that vs. C#. ARGH! All the teachers who wanted to teach C# were running into exactly the same road-block.

It’s like going to a mathematics forum and declaring “Guyz I forgot to carry a 1, screw Maths.

You may think you’re joking, but as a Maths teacher I can tell you I have seen a lot of posts where someone makes a mistake with their signs, then uses their wrong answer to declare “The rules of Maths are wrong! Look - different answer!”. Yeah umm, try working on getting your arithmetic right first before claiming to have “proved” something. 😂

Personally, I dislike the way the UI is declared and bound though (XAML)

You can write the MAUI UI in C#. No need to use XAML anywhere.

Creating MAUI UI’s in C#

It is just that here, in this situation, I didn’t get it

I scrolled back to see, and I think that initial one was just someone who disagreed with your suggestion, for whatever reason (like I downvote incorrect responses to order of operations questions. i.e. hearsay which contradicts what’s actually in textbooks and taught), but then yeah, there was some piling on when you asked for an explanation, and I just write them off as “I don’t want to see this” types. At first it bothered me, but in the end I just take out of it that I got more upvotes than downvotes, so just proceed with business as usual then. :-)

Remember the human, and all of that

Yeah, there’s some keyboard-warriors who forget that. You learn to just ignore the downvoters unless, like in your situation, you’d like an explanation as to why your particular suggestion was downvoted by someone. e.g. maybe they know something that you don’t. There was a whole side-discussion about Kagi like that (someone had seen something on a blog, and someone else pointed out the CEO’s response to the blog, etc. - I didn’t read the whole thing… but I didn’t downvote it either ;-) ).

I can’t even recall the last time I downvoted something

I’ve downvoted things which I know are wrong (people love expressing opinions on things they have no expertise on - just check out the threads on order of operations! 😂), and upvote correct things (the whole point to up/downvote is to push relevant things to the top), otherwise neither usually. Sometimes I use upvote to indicate I liked something someone said.

just seems so… lazy

Yep.

And now I am getting downvoted for asking an honest question

Welcome to programming.dev! 😂I’ve had the same happen (technical issue, looking for a solution or workaround, get downvoted). I take it as “I’m not interested in this - don’t ever show me anything about this again” - well, just scroll on by then, not hard. 🙄

Oh, I nearly forgot! I had to learn Python too… because I had to teach it. Did try to argue for C#, which is allowed under the curriculum (and would be a more suitable language to teach), but then found it’s hard to get that agreed on because so many schools just run Python because it’s easier for them from an administrative point of view - I found I wasn’t alone in this predicament. Thanks school admins…

Pascal was the first real language I learned (after basic)

Same. Taught myself some Basic in high school (first on a school computer, then we got a computer at home), learnt Pascal in 1st year Uni (programming basics - wrote a bunch of stuff for myself in Pascal for my computer) then C in 2nd year (OOP), and then Assembler in 3rd year. Later I taught myself (with the help of some books and courses… and intellisense! 😂) C#.