[plt-scheme] Prereqs for robotic programming

On Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 10:29:37AM -0500, Marco Morazan wrote:
> >
> > The gravest concern is that they will come OUT of your colleague's course
> > thinking they know how to program.
> >
> 
> That is, indeed, the gravest concern and why I would like Prof. BW to
> embrace program design in his intro to robotics course. The resistance
> to this suggestion is overwhelming. It is like an article of faith
> that program design does not apply to programming robots......
> 
> I must admit that distinguishing program design from programming feels
> most unnatural to me.....

It is indeed hard to distinguish.  Especially because saying I 
"design programs" makes it sound as if I'm don't actual write them -- 
that I just "design" them for others to implement. 

It's like the difference between writing (what you learn in Grade two) 
and writing (what regularly published authors do).  They say it takes 
about a million words of writing to climb the slope from one to the 
other.  But all of it is legitimately called "writing".

Authors aren't called "novel designers".

-- hendrik