Comments on: Why tutoring PHP is painful

By: Phil Andrews

Phil Andrews — Sun, 11 May 2008 18:37:08 +0000

Dave, realize that I am in no way kissing your butt because you are my lab instructor. But as a professional PHP developer and IT student I need to thank you so hard for writing this down.
Java is such a poor language to teach fundamentals with, and it is taught poorly at that. In my opinion anyway.
I also especially like your final thought here. I am a good programmer, and people think of me as one. When someone I’ve spoken with about programming finds out that I’m simply an IT major their first reaction is one of surprise. Sometimes they’re disappointed.
When I say I’m IT to someone who who doesn’t know me they always pull out the tired “Oh, you mean ‘I Tried’?”. No matter what, I always feel like I’m stuck trying to defend my major.
It’s good to know someone else is annoyed by the generalization, but realizes there is some basis to it as unfortunate as it is.

By: Jay

Jay — Wed, 07 May 2008 20:26:56 +0000

Dave, you said “Students that did poorly in Java tend to go towards multimedia / web because it is easy.” I don’t necessarily think that’s the case - because it ain’t easy. I think students that do poorly in general tend to try and take what they PERCEIVE is the easiest way out.

It’s a consistent pattern that I see even now in the workplace - people who don’t love what they’re doing won’t work at something they don’t see the point to. You can’t force people to program. If they hate it, they will hate it forever.

Being a success in anything requires you to deserve having pride in your work. Unfortunately, I don’t see this in alot of college work because students don’t typically see the immediate reward. The ones who really try are the ones who make it worth coming to work every day for me.

By: Liz Lawley

Liz Lawley — Wed, 07 May 2008 05:07:14 +0000

Well, *some* IT professors cover the basics again when they talk about Javascript and CGI and basic PHP.

New Media students don’t all take Java, btw…many of them take a programming class that’s all in Actionscript.

This is an issue, definitely, but I’m not sure it’s completely curricular. The students who don’t do well with the programming in the later classes are the same ones who’d probably drop out of the degree program if there was more in the earlier classes.

By: dave

dave — Wed, 07 May 2008 01:19:43 +0000

Agreed, one of the more difficult things about PHP is the multiple ways to code it. RIT does teach the “dirty” method, at least in most classes where they teach PHP…. but this is mostly because the professors do not know how to teach the language (surprisingly few know PHP well, and the course materials for it were written by someone who doesn’t know the proper way).

I’ve said it before, and i’ll say it again, New Media students, on the IT side of things, that take sufficient programming courses are some of the most successful students I’ve seen (inside and outside of the IT program). The other side to the coin, New Media students who don’t focus on programming are some of the least successful.

And yes, you can pass along data using sessions and cookies - but you have to do so explicitly which still validates my point :-P

By: Dan

Dan — Wed, 07 May 2008 00:37:28 +0000

Haha great rant dave :P I hear you, I also think alot of students have issues with PHP cause like many languages there are MANY MANY way to program it.

Unfortunately RIT teaches PHP via the “dirty” method as I call it- that is, here is your HTML, here is your PHP, put them in a blender, BAM dynamic pages!

Since advancing in the PHP world I have learned that PHP supports OOP as well! Woohoo! Ever since my code has been much more standardized, and I can even have non-PHP developers look at my PHP classes (!!!) and understand what’s going on. There is still some php/html blending but its FAR less than the way RIT taught me, I just init my classes in the html-ish and the rest of the work is done in the classes themselves.

I agree though, programming at RIT is definitely a weak point in the [NewMedia] program. Workin in a team of New Media seniors I am really seeing the lack of programming skills amongst the group, and it makes me sad… especially as the manager who has to pull it all together =X.

Oh and you forgot, you can pass data along using sessions and cookies too! ;)