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Comment by sp332 | Hacker News Reader

It's OK if you're only learning concepts and not syntax. Also if you're allowed to draw pictures, that will help a lot.

Obviously there's no replacement for the immediate feedback you can get by exploring with a real live computer. And you won't learn what is easy for a computer to do that might be hard for you to think about. I.e. you won't learn what a computer "feels" like or how it reacts to your input. I think this is a bad idea for a beginning class. Maybe some theory class later would be better.

"Always yield to the hands-on imperative!"

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Yes, I should have said something about it, but it is not, at least from what I've been told, about drawing boxes and having a visual representation of your algorithm, but actually writing it on Scheme. On a piece of paper.

What if I have a small bug, like a comma, or something small like that, out of place? I'll have to ask the teacher about it.

I'm thinking of just skipping this class and learn from OpenCourseware.

Thanks for your thoughts.

From my experience, teachers are pretty forgiving about "typos" in paper programming. They just want to make sure your thinking is good. Of course I can't vouch for your teacher in particular.

I'll ask him what he thinks about that. Thanks, really appreciated.

Not mine! I've got a story that my college buddies continue to tease me about, almost a decade later.

I was doing a test where we needed to write some computer code on paper. Somewhere in this code was a point that called for multiplication. No big deal. I drew my dot that I'd been taught in all of my math classes and continued on with the test.

When we got the results back, I noticed that he had marked me off for this particular part. Thinking that he had mistaken my dot for a decimal rather than a multiplication sign, I waited until after the class was over and approached him to let him know that I knew the right thing to do and was conveying it with my dot. Apparently he was looking for an asterisk to be drawn. I brought up that it was the same thing, but he would hear none of it. Out of seemingly nowhere he had become infuriated with the fact that I'd questioned him and started repeatedly asking "Will it compile? Will it compile?!" before eventually adding "Minus 10! Thank you Mr. Rose!" A whole letter grade on a test lost because I drew a dot rather than an asterisk. Oh well. At least my friends enjoy laughing it up.

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