Teaching creative computer science: Simon Peyton Jones at TEDxExeter

[@kofY84]

I bet his method of teaching has no side-effects :)

[@hamjakdebbarma692]

😂lol

[@redumptious2544]

Very well put! Very well. Would this be Reddit you might get an award from me.

[@aoeu256]

No... the side effects are being managed by Monads... which means for all practical purposes too difficult and impractical for mortal man...

[@noxabellus]

@@aoeu256 this is really sad to see (this pretending that cs is magic beyond understanding is very harmful and its something directly talked about in this video...)

[@SimonMorganYay]

Simon Peyton Jones is the real deal; a fully-fledged computer scientist. Among many other things he's one of the creators of the Haskell programming language. I can't think of many other people better equipped to push a Computer Science curriculum.

[@neilbedwell7763]

haskell was actually designed by a commitee team. Simons role was a part of the whole commitee. That said, YES Simon PJ IS the real deal. He is a computer scienctist with Charisma AND an Idealist for the betterment of all.

[@SimonMorganYay]

That's why I said *one of* the creators. ☺️

[@KeithSalisbury]

This is the first of Simon's talk's I've been able to understand all the way through. Legend! :)

[@IBloom3]

Simon is a saint. We are lucky to have people like this in the world.

[@vonBottorff]

The trouble is CS is a caste system -- at least here in the USA. Why? I'll explain briefly. Because there is no CS in the secondary schools, an incoming Freshman in CS must catch up all that lost time in, typically, their first year. The "elite schools" mash the pedal down and cram in years of CS theory in that first year, while the not-so-elite schools really can't. That sets up a two-class system. Ironically, SPJ is one of the main inventors of Haskell, a very mathematically-based/pure computer language. So often, this is the dividing line between an American first- and second-tier CS program: Are the students learning a "typed, functional" language (Haskell, SML, Ocaml, F#, typed Racket), or are they learning an imperative language? If the latter, then they're probably on a slower, shallower track, getting a more vocational school version of computing, hand-waving at the more serious theoretical CS topics. This results in an upstairs-downstairs computer world. Many reading this will howl in anger that I'm impugning that typed, functional languages (like the speaker SPJ's Haskell) are necessary to be a good CSer -- but yes, the "big boys and girls" are doing functional, while the rest are doing, errr, Python, Java, C/C++. Of course both have their niches, but yes, this will be a big question that needs to be answered: Take the high or low road? Go more theoretical or more hands-on?

[@AndreiGeorgescu-j9p]

The reality is most devs are just blue collar workers, they have no need to know much of anything. But hopefully that will change with ai replacing them

[@dushkin_will_explain]

Avoid success at all costs!

[@bhoare7885]

Steve Jobs: “Everybody in this country should learn to program a computer, because it teaches you how to think”

[@jackruby4857]

Steve Jobs did not know how to program.

[@bocckoka]

aha, yeah. or no. actually no. he did a whole lot of hardware and software optimization with the first apples.

[@JackSimpsonJBS]

Excellent talk, its a shame how the idiotic hysteria around the font has apparently diminished the enjoyment people garnered from this talk.

[@JackSimpsonJBS]

+Vinicius Ataide I was not commenting on his intentions, I was commenting on how silly people were obsessing over the font.

[@FranciscoPalmMapologo]

It's just a little healthy sense of humor not idiotic hysteria.

[@HS-bk1qk]

Am I the only one who could listen to him explain anything? Now I want some tea and biscuits. ☕🍪

[@arbbqr9851]

we in KOSOVO begin to learn HTML at highschool

[@glialcell6455]

Joke's on you, HTML isn't even a programming language!

[@lennyhandler8591]

i just see comic sans! good talk though

[@johnlazar2115]

Simon Peyton Jones at his inspirational best.

[@ricoswiss3155]

He wants to teach 5 years olds haskelll.

[@andreibozantan]

That's the way to go. Teach them the right thing from the start, instead of teaching them the impure things.

[@sohangchopra6478]

He doesn't want to teach 5 yr. olds ANY language, he is talking about teaching the IDEAS in Computer Science.

[@theblushingbookworm]

Excellent video, great ideas!

[@second_second_]

Amazing!! Yes, WE need to help the teachers. and also the lecturers

[@amrmoneer5881]

This man is not only a good speaker but he's prepared good examples to support his idea.

[@neilbedwell7763]

an inspiring talk. Revealing more of Simon PJ's brilliant character, morales and intellect. I wish to be involved.

[@JeremyMikkola]

One day I hope to contribute to the world as much as Simon does

[@sensecam]

Great work Simon!

[@MrNadimzahery]

now this is amazing

[@matc8085]

comic sans is very creative

[@段闰平]

听不懂....哎

[@ErnestCachia63]

Great, powerful and very true stuff!

[@daudatalawalay3886]

I want to study computer. But I done have the hand I looking for sponsor please

[@jamieeccleston2988]

I can't sponsor you, but I can help you if you're not too far away!

[@ILykToDoDuhDrifting]

Err... all of education has their pedagogy backwards. Learn tools and applications first, get interested, then learn theory to see its relevance. This is how things used to be. Now, students go through schools scribbling scratches on paper without know what their doing and why they're doing it. All to save costs where the costs are saved in the wrong place. It's a disaster. These theorists need to GTFO. Here's an idea, get rid of all the individual teachers and replaced them with tutors assigned to smaller groups. Learn by doing, experimentation, interaction. Then, here's a brilliant idea, there's a thing called video. You can record high quality lectures have them watched by billions. Rather than having low quality teachers teaching classes.

[@AndreiGeorgescu-j9p]

Completely wrong. What you're describing is blue collar work and has no place in a university. That's for trade school.

[@Kenji314159]

A 12 year old can understand diffie hellman? Of course, after they understood exponentiation, group theory and discrete mathematics, P vs NP, the discrete log problem. So, no, not really.

[@tarinai344]

Exactly Kenji! Simon, (if you are seeing this) a public-private (asymmetric) key system is very complicated (which of course I am sure you knew that), the example that you gave - that you are able to communicate secretly with one of your friends in the audience is not at all relevant.. It is not something a human can perform.. (I mean your friend decrypting with your public key the text that you encrypt with your private key). The secret key system (symmetric) perhaps, but you and your friend will still need to share a secret key beforehand... My point is, not very good analogies - you just introduced some alien jargon, confusing for the audience... doesn't drive any msg across, maddening for us nit-pickers.. ha And btw Simon, you speak way too fast! With all due respect Simon, you are most probably doing more than me (yet) to promote CS in education. Good Job! If I could say something, some of your analogies has to be even simpler, because non-CS people are easily turned off when we switch on our geek modes, and start introducing strange terms..

[@second_second_]

although a bit difficult to understand at first, I think it's a good analogy though. interesting for me

[@martinmengh]

what a pile of nice sounding nonsense... moern day sophistry ... this is part of how the bottom fell out in Western basic education ... so wrong on so many levels ..

[@faitht5405]

Bla bla bla

[@faitht5405]

I can confirm it by the way you have badly typed whatever gibberish you are trying to say …

[@dicktonyboy]

It's also a tribute to Tedx that forces all of this enthusiastic and well informed content into a condensed and palatable format that I can recommend (or 'Like'?) to others.

[@dicktonyboy]

(Controversial) IF (most ICT teachers achieved their current position by impressing their head that they were the first to understand the difference between a mouse and a foot pedal) {we have a problem with the incumbent workforce} ELSE {Simon - we really DO need informed crowd aid - can the UK rise to the challenge with our 'Battle of Britain' spirit?}