OddThinking

I was chatting, a while ago, to an IT lecturer was pondering how he was going to structure his course the following year. He had just been assigned, for the first time, to teach the C programming language to undergraduates.

I commiserated with him, and explained the facts of life as I understand them:

IT undergraduates have lecturers they like and lecturers they hate. They hate the lecturers who first teach them C.

This isn’t so much a theory as a working hypothesis. My sample size is only small. (I welcome additional data points as comments from people who have received formal tuition in C, whether they liked or hated their C lecturer. Self-selection bias be damned… and the false dilemma you rode in on.)

Of course, correlation doesn’t prove causality. There could be other good reasons – perhaps the worst lecturers tend to get assigned to the C language. The lecturer I was chatting to seemed a counter-example; I had had him previously as a lecturer and tutor, and he was fine at both.

I suspect the reason for this is that undergraduates themselves correlate having a frustrating time learning the language with the wrong cause: they blame the lecturer.

I don’t think there is anything the lecturers can do – they just have to live with being hated.

The C-afficionados in the audience should note: I haven’t attacked the power or utility of the C language. I am not saying it shouldn’t be used. I am just talking about the difficulty for undergraduates to pick up the concepts. I am not taking sides in a religious language war here, you poor deluded fools.

I should also note that I didn’t dislike my C lecturer because of some mistaken transference of frustration. I disliked him for genuine reasons, but that will be in a post coming soon.