a multiplicand in this case refers to one of the (n-x) terms

Well, that's what was apparently meant, but in fact the correct terminology here is factors. There's only multiplicands (and multipliers) with an explicit multiplication sign. axb - multiplicand a and multiplier b, ab - Term with factors a and b, and a is the coefficient of this Term.

have the experience of being the kid in that situation

Which kid? The gifted one, the one who didn't understand loops and used 20 variables for 20 iterations, the one who didn't understand how to write pseudo code, the one who was dyslexic,.....?

I learnt python in secondary school

Which Year? I didn't say it wasn't appropriate for high school, I said it wasn't appropriate for Year 7 as a first programming language.

I think they introduced the programming GCSE the year after I did my A-Levels

I was teaching the IGCSE, to students all over the globe.

you can JUST learn the programming bit

But NONE of the resources which have been provided to schools do it that way - they ALL use OOP. If that's what your faculty has chosen to use, then that's what you have to use. It comes back to what I've been saying all along - the schools are dictating to the teachers what they are to teach, and it's NOT based on what's best for the students educationally, but what has the least admin overhead for them. That's the stupid reason that I had to learn Python - admin concerns!

Thanks. It's a very 21st Century phenomenon that I've unfortunately run into many times

that’s not a problem unique to python

No, but it's a bigger problem for C# than is is for Python (though this is changing now), so all the U.K.-based schools were teaching Python, rather than the more-appropriate C#. That was my original point - that's the dumb reason I had to learn Python, school admin's wanted the lower overhead of the worse language.

Oh! I just remembered this video. If you wanna know how students can struggle with pseudo code, watch the video. I use this video when I teach algorithms (students are even worse at that than pseudo code).

YIj54yALOJxEsY20eU has compromised on their privacy values by not including a special character in their username.

They're just trying to convey they're not THAT strong. 😂

don’t have to learn about indenting until you cover flow control

Which is one of the very first things they're taught - "hello world", variables ("Enter your name", "hello {name}"), branches, and loops, in that order.

I’m not sure I can think of a language that would be better suited to learning

Pascal - it's what it was designed for. Variables, branches, and loops, with strong types and optional indenting. Once people have a handle on that, THEN move onto OOP.

Some of my intended audience don't know about Lemmy yet... hence the talk. :-)

this a 4 month old thread

Yeah, I know, but it'll show up in search results for all eternity, and it's full of disinformation. As a Maths teacher/tutor who is sick of hearing "But Google/Wolfram/TI says...", I'm doing my best to try and get said people to fix their damn calculators (and also make people aware that those calculators are wrong. (sigh) I miss the old days when all calculators gave the right answer - what happened??). If you feel the same way then feel free to share my links - that's what they're there for. :-)

And right at the moment I'm feeling too tired to do anything which requires me to think about it, so just doing what I can do on automatic. ;-)

That's ok - a lot of people weren't.

This would be correct if the post was about switches (which TBF many people made that mistake, including me initially), but it's about buttons - buttons should show what action will result from clicking on them. e.g. "Cancel" on a button which is going to cancel your process. For a play/pause button it should show play if you're paused (if I click on this it will start playing) and pause if you're playing (if I click on this it will pause).