Talk:Programming Fundamentals/Introduction/Flowchart

Intentional stubs for clarity and concise display

Are each of these Introductions in the final format according to lesson design choices? Are they meant to be quick stubs that stay as they are? For example, within a regular wiki page we could add the expected output, some discussion, or pictures of typical interfaces. Brett Johnston (discuss • contribs) 11:09, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

@Brett Johnston: Yes, the code examples are considered complete as is. Programming Fundamentals is used in a real-world course with 60+ students each semester. The examples are intended to show a specific programming structure in a given language, and allow users to quickly compare that structure across languages. It's a quick reference for "how do I do <structure> in <language>."

The intent is for users to learn by doing, so I didn't include the output. Instead, they are given a variety of links to copy and paste the code and try it themselves to see the output. I'm not opposed to including output, but I do want to maintain consistency. If we're updating one page, we're updating all 200 pages.

Interestingly, with more than 300 real-world students using this course, no one has ever asked for the output here. They're also encouraged to make wiki updates, and no one has tried to add output. Even in my advanced course where they do edit the code, they haven't added output there, either. If all you want is to see output, you might be better off using the free textbook. There's a link under Reading in the introduction. The book is also available on Wikibooks. And, interestingly, if you search Google for Programming Fundamentals, the Wikibook is now the definition of this topic. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 13:36, 20 April 2020 (UTC)