越南中学生逆天了：高中生一半通过谷歌面试

　　Google engineer Neil Fraser got a bit of a surprise when he visited Vietnam recently to see how schools teach ICT: kids in 11th grade are capable of passing the Chocolate Factory’s notoriously difficult interview process。谷歌工程师尼尔-弗雷泽在近期的一次越南之旅中被越南在信息通信技术方面的教学给震惊到了，因为越南11年级(高二)的学生有一半可以通过谷歌面试，而谷歌面试的测试题可是出了名的难。

　　Fraser blogged about his trip, which ostensibly seems to have been a fact-finding mission involving him turning up unannounced at various primary and high school classes to see what the students are being taught。谷歌工程师弗雷泽在自己的博客中记录了这次越南之旅，而这更像是一次发现之旅。弗雷泽秘密到访了几所不同的越南中小学，研究其计算机科学课程是如何教学的。

　　Wandering into an 11th grade high school class he found kids were studying the following problem: “Given a data file describing a maze with diagonal walls, count the number of enclosed areas, and measure the size of the largest one。”他在11年级的课堂上发现，学生需要解决的问题是“根据以下这个由斜面组成的迷宫地图数据文件，数出封闭区域的数量以及计算出其中最大一个的面积。”

　　Suitably impressed, Fraser then asked a senior engineer back home how the question would rank on a Google interview. Here's what emerged:让人吃惊的是，之后弗雷泽问了谷歌的一位高级工程师，让他比较一下这道题目和其他的谷歌面试题的难度。谷歌高级工程师这样认为：

　　Without knowing the source of the question, he judged that this would be in the top third. The class had 45 minutes to design a solution and implement it in Pascal. Most of them finished, a few just needed another five minutes. There is no question that half of the students in that grade 11 class could pass the Google interview process。在不知道题目来源的情况下，这位工程师认为越南学生的题目难度排在第三位。这道题目要求学生在45分钟内完成，多数学生完成了题目，只有一小部分学生还需要多给5分钟时间才能完成。毫无疑问，有一半的越南11年级中学生可以通过谷歌的面试流程。

　　Vietnam exposes its kids early on to computers and programming, with schools, teachers, parents and students apparently eager for them to learn in a way that isn’t mirrored in the US, or presumably the UK。越南让孩子很早就开始学习计算机和编程的课程，学校、老师、家长[微博]显然都希望用一种不同于美国或英国的教育方式来培养孩子。

　　Computer classes start with the basics in Grade Two, by the following year students are learning how to use Windows XP – apparently ubiquitous in the country, while Grade Four sees them begin programming in Logo, starting with sequences of commands, then progressing to loops. By Grade Five they are “writing procedures containing loops calling procedures containing loops”， he said。弗雷泽发现，越南学生从2年级开始学习计算机基础知识，3年级学生人人都在学习如何使用Windows XP，4年级学生学习标识代码，5年级学生编写包含循环结构的程序。

　　By comparison, at San Francisco's magnet school for science and technology (Galileo Academy) 11 and 12th grade students struggle with HTML's image tag, while loops and conditionals were “poorly understood”， and computer science homework is banned by the school board, said Fraser。与之相比，旧金山的中学生的科技课程是这样的，11年级和12年级的学生还在学习HTML图像标记，至于包含循环结构的程序对学生们来说还是“难于理解”，根据学校董事会的规定，学校还不能给学生布置计算机相关的回家作业。

　　If nothing else, this snapshot into the Vietnamese school system shows what can be done despite limited funds。越南教育体系正在向我们展示如何在资源非常有限的情况下培养出优秀的计算机精英。