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Comment by dickfickling | Hacker News Reader

I attended Northeastern from 2010-2013. Fundies (the freshman-level functional programming courses) was fundamental (ha) to my growth as a software developer. It taught me how to reason about data and how to design programs (the literal name of the textbook).

I know a lot of students hated it—frankly those were mostly the students that it seemed were only doing computer science programs because they’d heard they could make a lot of money in the field. The “real nerds” all seemed to love it, and now nearly 15 years later those are the engineers in my network who have built the most impressive systems and products.

I guess I’ll have to update my default instructions for recruiters from “automatically interview anyone with a degree from Northeastern” to add “if they graduated before 2025”

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I can't find a person who didn't initially make the fun-dies joke, then later come around to it, myself included. Sometimes you don't realize someone helped you until years later.

> I know a lot of students hated it

That's a good thing. I don't know whether your assertion about the breakdown between "real nerds" and the other camp is accurate or not, but I think this point stands on its own regardless--learning is hard. It's uncomfortable. It's unpleasant. If it isn't, you're not being pushed hard enough. So what's the point of asking students how they feel about it? Why make strategic decisions based on those data?

I'm genuinely curious, not trolling or anything. It seems completely baffling to me that educators behave this way, and I'd really love to understand why.

My take: if a given task is not fun, then it is work. People on average do not enjoy work. They do not like doing work, let alone doing it well. Training kids to do work well, without any pleasure, necessitates heavy accountability enforced by management, which brings a slew of its own requirements and complexities.

Schools already handle many cross-competing concerns across stakeholders (PTA, Taxpayers, Town Government, State Government), so I suspect they would want to reduce their enforcement & oversight load. They'll choose a teaching style that makes everyone happy or at least complacent, even if they know "fun is not learning".

My best learning was difficult, whole mind encompassing, and incredibly fun.

If you can get college students idle brains curiously contemplating the how and why of the subject, that's when the tuition is really worth it.

I completely agree. The only things I consider fun are also "hard", "uncomfortable", and "unpleasant". Otherwise it's just boring.

Another way to say it is "rewarding".

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