Games are commonly used in some introductory programming courses because they’re fun for students to create and they teach basic programming concepts just as effectively as creating other kinds of applications.

On the other hand, in the business school we’ve traditionally favoured teaching using little mini practical examples with a business flavour.  We’ve sometimes thrown in a few games in our stage 1 course, but generally the assumption has been it’s better to teach them something similar to what they’re going to be building or prototyping when they graduate.   

The problem with an all games approach is that students sometimes find it hard to apply those concepts to a non-game environment.  Sure, if they’re thoroughly mastered all aspects of programming, they can apply those skills to any domain.  But our students only take one 12-week programming course.  They get the basics, not mastery.  And very few go on to become developers (unless they take computer science also).   They should however understand the design and construction of business applications and be able to prototype systems.   I’m just unsure how well they can do that if all we taught them was to build simple games.

Anyone have any thoughts?

Well, it sure has been a long time since I last posted.  This time I have not one excuse, but many:

1. Exam marking.  I spent most of the first part of November eyeballs deep in marking and grading.
2. Finishing my thesis.  The last part of November and the first two weeks of December were devoted to thesis work.  I wrote one third of my thesis in that two week period and submitted it to my supervisor on December 15th.  There are still one or two rounds of revision before I formally submit, but it’s essentially done.
3. Moving house.  As most of you would have gathered from Stephen’s blog post, I moved into a new apartment on December 16th.  It took a while to get everything sorted, with furniture to come from my brother’s place, some stuff from Waiheke and having to buy some new furniture.  
4. Christmas & New Year.  I spent a few days unplugged over on Waiheke for Christmas, and then got stuck into prepping for a series of New Year parties.
5. Playing games, reading books, watching TV and other normal time-wasters.  Having given up an awful lot of leisure activities in order to spend time on my thesis, now that it is over I have been indulging.  Been watching a Burn Notice marathon, reading books and playing GTA: Vice City Stories.

Sometime this week or next, my supervisor should be getting back to me with suggestions for rewriting and revising my thesis.  I will then have something to procrastinate and regular blog posts should resume.

One of the tasks my students have to do during their first assignment is to start a new thread on our discussion forum. There are no rules, they can post about anything.

Student 1 calls his thread ‘Sup noobs’. Here is the exchange that ensued:

Student 1: Assignment zero weow!
Student 2: lol t3h n00bz0r is j00
Student 2: wewt
Student 1: stfu