>>>>> "GWJ" == G Wade Johnson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
GWJ> I have the impression that many colleges/universities don't want GWJ> to "waste time" teaching multiple languages. Whether the professors GWJ> realize it or not, the administrators can't see the point; and it's GWJ> the administrators that control the money. well, back in my day, the first general programming class all CS majors took covered pdp-11 assembler, algol and lisp. and not one second was spent teaching the languages themselves. we all picked them up as needed (from textbooks and such) and tackled the conceptual problems we were given. you learned the languages as a side effect which worked out well. i have seen other schools (CUNY) where a single course covered a spectrum of 5 languages but in that one most of the students couldn't teach themselves as readily and so the course was more a get your feet wet type thing and no one really learned them well or the interesting differences between them. the level of experience of the student body makes for a a different learning experience. in another class on compilers, the recitation (30 students) instructor asked to name languages we knew. we came up with over 100 in a few minutes. and that was 25 years ago. if they asked that in the CUNY class, i bet they would have topped out at 15 or so. there are many factors into what languages are taught. corporate sponsorship is one (evil) influence. perl has no corporate backing and no PR engine so it doesn't get into the professors' radar. on the other hand, i bet perl is heavily used on almost every campus in the usual places. if there were some way to get the schools to realize that practical languages have a purpose and should be taught as well. hopefully perl6 will gain the academic cachet (read pure and true OO) to get on the currilcula of more schools. uri -- Uri Guttman ------ [EMAIL PROTECTED] -------- http://www.stemsystems.com ----- Stem and Perl Development, Systems Architecture, Design and Coding ---- Search or Offer Perl Jobs ---------------------------- http://jobs.perl.org Damian Conway Perl Classes - January 2003 -- http://www.stemsystems.com/class
