Twice this morning I've suggested that people
learn by reading the software (spreadsheet
formulas) that I've posted on the web.
I must emphasize that that there are waaay more than
one or two problems that can be solved that way.
Teach your students to do this!
1) Sometimes people communicate in English. Sometimes
they communicate in software.
A federal court has ruled that software is (at
least sometimes) expressive speech and as such
is protected by the first amendment. This was
upheld on appeal by the Ninth Circuit Court. http://www.t-b.com/bernstein.htm
This is a Big Deal (tm) and we should vigorously
defend our right to speak software. There are
a lot of fascists out there who are trying to
restrict it.
2) People are all-too-accustomed to getting
software without the source. You then forfeit
the chance to learn from reading the source.
You also forfeit the chance to fix it yourself
if it's broken, and/or to extend it if you have
an idea for an improvement.
These are just some of the many costs imposed on
us by a certain non-law-abiding software monopoly.
People think that monopoly is all about price. It's
not. It's also about what you get for the price.
3) Some software is hard to understand even when you
have the source. But some isn't so hard. I find
spreadsheets to have a lot of pedagogical value,
because people find it relatively easy to figure
out what they do, by reading what's in the cells,
and doing a little experimenting.
I have never seen anybody learn to program decently
just by reading books about programming. You learn
a lot by reading other people's code.
=================
Bottom line: when I wrote the Laplace-equation solver
spreadsheets, I didn't just post a web page that
talked _about_ the spreadsheets... I posted the
spreadsheets, too. I posted them for a reason.