Date   : Wed, 03 Nov 2010 08:13:03 -0500
From   : jules.richardson99@... (Jules Richardson)
Subject: No wonder CompSci graduates are unemployed

J.G.Harston wrote:
> [snip]
> A horrendous number of job applicants can't even tackle
> eeny weeny tiny problems:
> 
> http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/02/why-cant-programmers-program.html

Not so long ago, I raised the prospect with Bill Thompson of running a 
modern-day computer literacy project via the BBC - given the current state of 
computing in the education sector, it seems like it's high time. I'm just 
playing the waiting game to see if anything comes of it, but he thought it was 
a great idea.

My thinking was to have an emulator of a machine running on the most common 
modern OSes - but also companion real hardware which could be built (something 
simple - perhaps not unlike a System 1 in terms of spec). The emulator would 
be very visual, allowing easy inspection of memory contents, bus and CPU 
activity etc. to help teach how the machine worked. Courses in programming 
could be run in assembler, BASIC, and "something else".

cheers

Jules