Hi Marcus, On 4 February 2011 15:59, Marcus Denker <marcus.denker@inria.fr> wrote:
... that we do not do what we teach.
typically, most of the software one comes across does not look like one would have written it. When it comes to teaching, and that is true for any language with a reasonable amount of API, this is inevitable as well. If you had written the complete software base that you use in teaching yourself, then "we do not do what we teach" would be painfully correct, but in fact, the phrase should be "we do not use software that was written like we teach" - and that is probably OK since the people that wrote it most likely did not attend your courses. The incident you mention happens to us as well - a lot. We encourage students to improve the system, push their changes to the Inbox and start discussions on the mailing list. Not all of them do, but some, and that is already a success.
We tell them how to program, but they look at the code in front of them and see something completely different. So there is some clash with only two possible solutions: Change what you Teach or Change what you Do.
The world isn't black and white; that's a fairly pessimistic way of putting things. :-) May I add another solution: encourage people to try and push the principles they learn into existing code and thereby apply that knowledge. Most of the software out there is not as cosy as the perfect teaching environment, but people who understand the ideas of "good code" and "good design" can make a change. Best, Michael