The idea that only certain people can understand Object-Oriented Paradigm can be tremendously problematic for education. OOP (in particular, C++) is becoming industry standard. One of the major deals with OOP is that it should make more sense- represent code as the world is represented. Regardless of one's age, one should still be able to see the world with new eyes- see things as objects and see interactions between them. Although an old coder is used to another paradigm, if she is willing to see things from a different perspective, she is more than capable of learning OOP, regardless of age.
For me, this article supports my intial assumption - that OOP is natural since it mimics real world views. I also believe that the hardest thing about switching from Procedural to OOP is realizing that a switch is going to happen and, thus, preparing to start over. Bringing in expectations of programming based on previous paradigms causes the difficulty. As a TA, I have seen this in many students who have previous programming skills. They feel as though they are elite for their knowledge and their arrogance gets in their way of their flexibility to learn something new.
Although the article attempts to prove that "old dogs can learn new tricks," I do feel as though there is unaccounted error in their documentation. Understanding of programming knowledge cannot be shown solely by examinations. Examinations only demostrate one portion of knowledge learned. The older members (or the younger ones) could be more skilled at taking exams or memorizing definitions, etc. This would imbalance the accuracy of the results. In addition, exams such as these may be easier for people with background then those without (this is never addressed in the article except for a mentionning that some had background whereas others did not). In addition, there is no mentionning of how much time either group spent in preparing for the exams or how they studied. The only thing that the article can concretely proove is that it is possible for some older people to learn the object-oriented methodology.
While I agree that OOP models things more naturally, I don't think that all new OOP students realize this. It took me a while to understand that objects were better at modeling the real world then procedures; and until I saw the power of OOP, I was skeptical. OOP may be the way of the future, but for those with a strict procedural background, it seems really weird at first.
Correct. The old dogs don't want to accept anything new. Most of the people taking the course are willing to learn something new. Most of the veterans in CS15 like their old ways and think they are cool for knowing them, thus not wanting to change.
I agree that examinations are an arbitrary manner in determining proficiency with programming. Though that may, in fact, be because of our anti-test background. Currently the AP testing is done through tests and not programming, so there may be some merit to the idea that we are missing. It seems that a more robust system of testing their assumptions would be necessary to come to a full conclusion.