Who remembers VBscript and JScript

[Travis]

I remember a training at the end of the 90's, where we were taught programming in VBScript and JScript, the future of the Internet. This was certainly a Microsoft-only certified teacher :)

[keyplyr]

I never took a class. I've always been a self-starter. There's usually enough info available to just figure things out.

[csdude55]

Similar but different...

Sometime around 2005, I taught an Advanced Internet Programming class at the local community college, focusing on Perl. It was the last class the students had before graduating with an Associate's Degree.

I was absolutely AMAZED at how little the students knew. One told me that she had never successfully written a program in ANY language... but was still about to graduate. They had no real understand of functions, arrays, anything... but they had been studying for almost 2 years!

Being that this was the last class, I felt like they needed to demonstrate SOME ability to program. So I made the final exam 50% of the grade, and it was fairly simple; I created a basic script, let them see it working, and their job was to make their own version of it. I gave them a week to do it, open notes, open book, they could work together if they wanted, and I was available for any and all questions.

3 students were able to actually do it. In the end, I had to fail 27 students. One of them even had the audacity to try to BRIBE another teacher to write it for her!

The college didn't ask me to come back and teach anymore. They said they would rather have a high graduation rate than the students actually know the subject >:-(

But anyway, to answer your question, Travis... yep, I remember trying to figure out that mess of VBScript and JScript! Thank God I didn't pay too much attention! lol At the time, I was totally focused on Perl, so nothing else really caught my attention anyway.

[LifeinAsia]

They said they would rather have a high graduation rate than the students actually know the subject >:-(

And unfortunately, that seems to be a common theme in education, ranging all the way down to K-12 as well (although it appears to be less so in private schools that recognize the effect that type of policy would have on their reputation).

They had no real understand of functions, arrays, anything... but they had been studying for almost 2 years!

I guess the real questions is what (if anything) DID they learn during that time? Those are the types of things that I learned in my first formal programming class.

As to VBscript and JScript, I remember being very stubborn about not wanting to learn them and continued to stick with JavaScript. I almost regretted it later when I was at a job and there was a long debate about whether to migrate the entire codebase to ASP. But thankfully, that decision was scrapped.