Back in school today. Rumour had it that I might even take a lesson, which fortunately for me didn't transpire. I don't think I'm quite ready for that, as of yet, although I have no qualms about going around the pupils and seeing if I can lend assistance. I have no problems whatseoever with what most of them are doing, but I did get a bit of a surprise when I saw one lad's VB code, and on first appearances it looked fairly alien. On closer inspection however, I quickly got a grasp of what the program was trying to do. More to the point, after a few attempts I managed to locate the source of his difficulties.
I think I'll probably want to give myself a bit of a VB refresher. It is difficult though approaching a bunch of code without even having seen what the program is intending to achieve. I don't really have any problem with the coding concepts, at least not those I'll be dealing with day-to-day. VB is a great piece of software on which to learn basic programming, hence the "basic" in the name I suppose. I'm hearing that Java is being mooted as a possible classroom replacement for VB, but I suspect that there would be major difficulties selling Java to Standard Grade level pupils.
Even though most programming languages have a bunch of similarities, what makes VB such a useful tool for learning programming, is the visual element. Each item has code attached to it, and this compartmentalisation makes it so much simpler to learn. Well, that's my theory and I'm sticking to it!
