I agree that you will have to explain the difference to them at some point if they really try and do any serious project with Processing, and furthermore: if you want to learn basic programming, there's some minimum level of math that you need, or you just aren't going to succeed. Learning the difference between an integer and a float is precisely the kind of thing an introductory program SHOULD teach. I believe it is introduced on the first day of most any programming class, like "intro to java" or "intro to C++".
I guess the problem is more, that many artists hate math and never thought they would need it. And in the US, that's in many cases the fault of a horrible public school system. Even I, though I have reasonable mathematical skills, stopped doing math way too early (at beginning calculus) - because back then (12 years ago) I never knew I'd be doing digital audio that required more advanced math stuff. No math teacher ever mentioned that there might be direct musical applications for math, and besides, I was a jazz piano player back then.
It would be interesting to use PD to teach some math stuff actually - I'd like to see some kind of basic fft tutorial so I can explain Mathieu's posts on doing fft in PD, for instance! ;-)
~David
On 10/13/06, Mathieu Bouchard matju@artengine.ca wrote:
On Thu, 12 Oct 2006, Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:
Also, I think they should have used a Number object instead of ints and floats, since its meant for people to learn programming. Explaining what a float is to someone who barely does math is a pain in the ass.
Eventually, even if you force people to use only floats, you still have to explain how they work. It's just that at the level of teaching that you do, you are able to sweep the topic under the carpet, and the carpet is thick enough that you can pretend that there's no lump in it, until some student stumbles upon it and breaks his/her jaw, but by that time you're usually gone.
_ _ __ ___ _____ ________ _____________ _____________________ ... | Mathieu Bouchard - tél:+1.514.383.3801 - http://artengine.ca/matju | Freelance Digital Arts Engineer, Montréal QC Canada
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