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snoodog  ·  2715 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: October 19, 2016

I liked Computer science because I had a great teacher in highschool but I was also there by choice. I guess you need to ask yourself why you students are there in the first place? Is it a mandatory class? Is it elective? Is it just because seniors have nothing better to do on saturdays.

It sounds like you already found something that inspires your students. The IRC bots are interesting, you could just take it apart piece by piece and show them how it works. Then have them remake it. I think that was a big miss about my programming experience when I was younger. We never got to work with real professional level code so it was really hard to see what best practices were. Also reading published code is a real skill that is very valuable that doesn't get enough early emphasis.

    Have you ever started taking a class with no intentions of putting in more than minimum effort, but then been won over by the teacher/subject?

To answer your question, yes. If the professor is passionate about the subject Im pretty easily won over even if I otherwise don't give a fuck about the topic an don't ever see using the info but you gotta be really f-ing good.