On Fri, 27 Dec 2002 11:39:03 -0500 Uri Guttman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >>>>> "GWJ" == G Wade Johnson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > GWJ> I have the impression that many colleges/universities don't > GWJ> want to "waste time" teaching multiple languages. Whether the > GWJ> professors realize it or not, the administrators can't see the > GWJ> point; and it's 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. I've spent some time over the last few years teaching entry-level programmers coming to my former employer. I was surprised at how many CS and SE majors came in with fewer languages than I knew when I finished my EE degree. > 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. I've seen an attitude in the students I've dealt with that one language is all you need and that a "pure" language (like Java, <smirk/>) is better than a "messy" language (like Perl <grin/>). I wonder how much of that was caused by a market where programming was perceived as a "get rich quick" sort of thing. We may have gotten a different caliber of student during that rush. I have noticed that most of the really good programmers I've known either pick up Perl for quick-and-dirty solutions or end up being real Perl nuts (like me). > 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. I also find it interesting that many people don't realize that one of Perl's greatest strengths is that it doesn't force a paradigm on you. If you have a problem that doesn't lend itself well to objects, a pure OO language really gets in the way. (Or you write one big class and do all of the procedural work in that class.<shrug/>) With Perl you have more more tools/paradigms/viewpoints to work with. Sorry about that, I guess I'm preaching to the choir again.<smile/> Later, G. Wade -- A 'language' is a dialect with an army.
