{"id":310,"date":"2022-10-30T23:20:47","date_gmt":"2022-10-30T14:20:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.harvard.edu\/adamnoto\/?p=310"},"modified":"2022-10-30T23:24:57","modified_gmt":"2022-10-30T14:24:57","slug":"a-6th-grader-eloquent-answer-to-nil-vs-false","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/adamnoto\/2022\/10\/30\/a-6th-grader-eloquent-answer-to-nil-vs-false\/","title":{"rendered":"A 6th-grader eloquent answer to nil vs false"},"content":{"rendered":"

On the 7th test today, I received the following answer, verbatim, to a question asking them what is the difference between a null<\/code>\u00a0and a false<\/code>\u00a0in the Gara programming language<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Beda kelas dan makna, kalau salah memiliki makna tidak benar\/tidak betul, salah berada di kelas boolean, sedangkan nil adalah suatu objek yang menunjukkan tidak adanya objek, nil berada di kelas nirdefinisi<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Or in English:<\/p>\n

They are of different classes. The false<\/code>\u00a0signifies untruthy condition, and is of the Boolean<\/code>\u00a0class, whereby nil<\/code>\u00a0is an object signifying an absence of an object, and is of class Nulldefinition<\/code>\u00a0.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The programming language being used here used the term salah<\/code>\u00a0for false<\/code>, and nil<\/code>\u00a0for null<\/code>, and the class of nil<\/code>\u00a0is Nirdefinisi<\/code>\u00a0which means without definition<\/em> in Indonesian.<\/p>\n

This is such an eloquently written answer from a student who has not written any code ever before. We can notice how they really understood the concept of objects and how, in this case, they were able to point some subtle differences between a false<\/code>\u00a0against a falsey object. Those are concepts that some undergraduate students here in Indonesia may struggle with.<\/p>\n

Even as these kinds of classes were very new to them, we can see that there is some potential here. This class is by no means easy for them. Many of whom don’t even have PCs at home. No student scored an A–yet. Regardless, this signifies that computer science education, when taught with the right tools and syllabus, can be understood by a 6th-grader. I will run the same kind of research and experiment with 5th-graders this year.<\/p>\n

There are more than can be achieved.<\/p>\n

\"Students

Students at the computer science class in an elementary school in East Java, Indonesia<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the 7th test today, I received the following answer, verbatim, to a question asking them what is the difference between a null\u00a0and a false\u00a0in the Gara programming language: Beda kelas dan makna, kalau salah memiliki makna tidak benar\/tidak betul, salah berada di kelas boolean, sedangkan nil adalah suatu objek yang menunjukkan tidak adanya objek, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10207,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[318868],"tags":[318870,134],"class_list":["post-310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-compscischool","tag-coding-class","tag-education"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/adamnoto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/adamnoto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/adamnoto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/adamnoto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10207"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/adamnoto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=310"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/adamnoto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":316,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/adamnoto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310\/revisions\/316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/adamnoto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/adamnoto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/adamnoto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}