Monday, May 18, 2009

The FizzBuzz test & programmers ... or not

Coding Horror: Why Can't Programmers.. Program?

Simple test for programming skills:
Write a program that prints the numbers from 1 to 100.
But for multiples of three print "Fizz" instead of the number and for the multiples of five print "Buzz".
For numbers which are multiples of both three and five print "FizzBuzz".


See also:

Separating Programming Sheep from Non-Programming Goats

it seems fundamental skills are not being understood:


See also :http://www.cs.mdx.ac.uk/research/PhDArea/saeed/

All teachers of programming find that their results display a 'double hump'. It is as if there are two populations: those who can, and those who cannot, each with its own independent bell curve. Almost all research into programming teaching and learning have concentrated on teaching: change the language, change the application area, use an IDE and work on motivation. None of it works, and the double hump persists. We have a test which picks out the population that can program, before the course begins. We can pick apart the double hump. You probably don't believe this, but you will after you hear the talk. We don't know exactly how/why it works, but we have some good theories.

So true. I see this in all my programming subjects!!!

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