Re: RPG instruction

>Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2000 17:47:36 -0400
>From: "R. Bruce Hoffman, Jr." <rbruceh@attglobal.net>
>
>Not a topic, but a technique... (and this was not my idea, a friend
>mentioned it one time as a teaching aid)
>
>Step 1: Have everyone in the class write a non-tivial program and get it
>working.
>Step 2: Have everyone in the class hand their program to the person on the
>right (or left) and ring shift (last guy on row takes to first guy on
row).
>Step 3: Have everyone in the class make a non-trivial change to the
program
>just handed them.
>
>Ground rule 1: the original developer is dead, no help, only comments in
the
>code to go with
>Ground rule 2: nobody in the class knows in advance that this is comming

I had a similar lesson, except that we had to make the change to our own
program (ground rule 2 applied in our case).  I found this to be one of
the most powerful lessons I got in school.

Another way to implement your technique would be to give all the students
the same working program and have them modify it.  Stage one: give them
a "good" program to work with.  Stage two: give them a horrible one;
ideally
one that has already been badly maintained by a different programmer than
the original.

Barbara Morris


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