On 15 Jan 2008, at 15:02, Lindsay Marshall wrote:
Based on the discussion I listened to, the statement that
"applicants equate enrolling on this program => becoming great
at Java => well-paid employment" is not true here, as Michael
suspected.
No, there it is "applicants equate enrolling on this program => get
degree from cambridge, even a 3rd => well-paid employment"
I'll provide a datapoint without the cachet of Cambridge, then --
In 1998, the University of Queensland chose Java as a teaching
language. Although I wasn't directly involved in the decision, I did
observe it taking place. There had been a tension between the
electrical engineering department's desire to teach C early in the
course (because students were expected to use it in the
microcontroller practicals) with the CS department's concerns that C
promotes bad habits when taught as a first or second language because
it makes it too easy to do unsafe pointer arithmetic (so instead the
CS department had taught engineers Pascal and Modula2, which they
could not use in practicals due to poor compiler and tool support on
the relevant microcontrollers). When the departments merged, Java
was adopted because it was a strongly-typed language with a good OO
model and C-like syntax -- this hit both bases of teaching good
habits and reducing the learning barrier to using C in embedded
practicals.
Again, there was no "applicants equate enrolling on this program =>
becoming great at Java => well-paid employment" process involved.
William Billingsley
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