was one hint given and repeated at the ecoop workshop on "pedagogies and tools". anyhow, for my taste the discussion was to much circled by uml.

somehow the talks let me recall an oopsla question from 2005: what is the least understood thing in computing ... i didn't do so, but i guess if i would have asked, they would have told me: oop, at least that's what their presentations suggest. maybe i overdraw and the thing they actually wanted to tell me was just: it's the teaching, it's hard to find good non-misleading examples to explain. they tested students and practitioners alike. yet their sample rate is not that big, retesting is missing and you can question the setup in general. yet, that was somehow their message in a nutshell. kind of depressing setup. also as an answer to the problem was uml, a modelling tool. for me it is a business modell more than everything else, for sure i wouldn't identify it as something that would help me to understand. so far nobody could convince me otherwise. it's in wide use, was one and probably honest answer. call me old fashioned, i prefer storytelling.

marc roper was presenting a test they were doing with their students in relation to the work of saeed dehnadi and richard bornat, the latter call

a test which divides programming sheep from non-programming goats | the camel has two humps.

what's missing all three say are viable mental models of fundamental programming concepts.