You may be right, but in my case at least I don't think it would have made any difference. I was an Accounting student who took one class in computer programming just thinking it sounded boring but I should know something about the subject, and I was immediately hooked. The class was in PL/C, but I started spending all my spare time at the computer center, teaching myself BASIC, FORTRAN and SPSS, anything that seemed halfway interesting. I had a student job at the computer center when the fall semester started, and although I finished my degree in Accounting I went straight into professional computer geekery after graduation.
My point is certainly not to object to the idea of being formally taught a variety of languages. I could have been saved quite a few quarters of frustration if someone had been around to explain "does not support this property or method" to me, when I tried to use VBA without an understanding of what "object" means in practical terms. But in the long run I learned the skills I needed as I went along. I'm sure others have done the same. ...Then again, Burlington Industries spent some days putting me through Deltak video courses getting me thoroughly grounded in COBOL and JCL. There are some things I would probably never have learned without formal training. I think I'm often more cock-sure of myself than reality warrants; must avoid that. --- Bob Bridges, robhbrid...@gmail.com, cell 336 382-7313 /* This universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper. */ -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf Of Seymour J Metz Sent: Monday, April 13, 2020 15:38 My take is that Universities should be teaching concepts, not language du jour. By all means make freshman programming a required course, but a CS or IT student should get exposure to multiple languages with radically difference semantic, including functional and procedural. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
