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

----------------------------------------------------------------------
PPIG Discuss List (discuss@ppig.org)
Discuss admin: http://limitlessmail.net/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Announce admin: http://limitlessmail.net/mailman/listinfo/announce
PPIG Discuss archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/discuss%40ppig.org/

Reply via email to