Having done 3 1/2 years of engineering, it looks very obvious to me that many of us concentrate on getting the syntax right rather than absorbing the concepts. Concepts are implemented using programming language syntax, which are of course necessary. But, students tend to give more importance to syntax rather than the concepts that these syntax statements emphasize. This is not the consequence of the students' interest. The laboratory examinations of engineering colleges focus mainly on programs that are strongly syntax oriented. In the earlier years, lab examinations were conducted with the questions being provided on the spot. This made the students' mind to do some brainstorming and get the problem solved. The case is entirely different in our colleges, where the same programs would be provided and the one with the best memory passes out clean!
Many of us would have heard of state-of-the-art software products like Linux and Face book which are nothing but projects that were done by two engineering students in their colleges. These two software, obvious enough, are ruling their own domains of implementation. What made these people to develop such innovative software? The primary reason that I would give is that the educational system there demands students to produce such a project to get their course completion certificate. The students would naturally put their grey cells to work and come out with a novel solution that will naturally act as a trend setter for future projects.
To sum up, unless we revert back to the method of the past, where lab questions for the end examinations would be provided on the spot, we can never expect students to do extremely great innovations in the software field. The lighter side of this issue is that, since the lab exercises are syntax oriented students pay very little heed to the instructor's words and spend the hour gleefully chit-chatting! I had been the victim of those "Don't talk!" people who eargerly await to see someone talking in the lab and hand them over to higher authority! If we have a challenging task at hand, why do we think of whiling away the time?? We can't blame the system as a whole to take responsibility for this poor situation but its also on the students' part to get the better half. This situation should change, else computer engineers will become idiot-boxes, repeating the syntax alone rather than climbing up the innovation ladder!
Many of us would have heard of state-of-the-art software products like Linux and Face book which are nothing but projects that were done by two engineering students in their colleges. These two software, obvious enough, are ruling their own domains of implementation. What made these people to develop such innovative software? The primary reason that I would give is that the educational system there demands students to produce such a project to get their course completion certificate. The students would naturally put their grey cells to work and come out with a novel solution that will naturally act as a trend setter for future projects.
To sum up, unless we revert back to the method of the past, where lab questions for the end examinations would be provided on the spot, we can never expect students to do extremely great innovations in the software field. The lighter side of this issue is that, since the lab exercises are syntax oriented students pay very little heed to the instructor's words and spend the hour gleefully chit-chatting! I had been the victim of those "Don't talk!" people who eargerly await to see someone talking in the lab and hand them over to higher authority! If we have a challenging task at hand, why do we think of whiling away the time?? We can't blame the system as a whole to take responsibility for this poor situation but its also on the students' part to get the better half. This situation should change, else computer engineers will become idiot-boxes, repeating the syntax alone rather than climbing up the innovation ladder!
