Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Confidence (Small Post #6)
I programmed simple computer games as a kid, I learned to program my graphing calculator in high school, and now I am about to finish my junior year studying computer science at BYU, but I still have fears I will be unable to finish programming assignments. Computer Science assignments are usually all or nothing. Either the student finishes the project and receives an A or doesn’t and fails. To make things worse, one bug not foreseen can cause several unplanned hours of debugging. Several hours of debugging can take place without any progress, and the programmer must have the confidence in themself to keep working by believing they will find the bug. For every assignment I have to allocate sufficient time in my schedule such that I will have full confidence I will finish my assigned project, but when I am short on time I have to rely on the confidence I have built up by solving hundreds of previous problems. It is not surprising that a lack of confidence to succeed is a reason people choose not to major in Computer Science.
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Is "lack of confidence to succeed" a reason people don't major in CS? You don't really provide anything to back that statement up. I didn't major in CS at because I didn't know it existed, but once I found it out I was fascinated. I think lack of visibility of science and engineering in general is a problem for middle-school and high-school students.
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