Tracy R Reed wrote:
This ties in with our study of SICP. I tend to agree with the author. I
don't have a CS degree either but I am educating myself and I am more or
less familiar with the concepts that are mentioned that a lot of CS
grads don't have these days. I have seen several articles like these
lately:
http://www.stsc.hill.af.mil/CrossTalk/2008/01/0801DewarSchonberg.html
Any article that attempts to defend C++ (independent of C) as a
pedagogical language loses all credibility with me. Sorry.
There are quite a few languages that do everything C++ can do, and they
do it much better.
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/ThePerilsofJavaSchools.html
I know they specifically point the finger at Java but I don't think they
are really saying Java is the problem. It is the decisions of school
administrators and their fear of losing all of their enrollment because
programming is just too hard that is the problem. It seems like industry
is starting to put some pressure back on the schools to stop the
dumbing-down process and start making real software engineers (and we
all know we use "engineer" in a rather loose sense here since
engineering is science and programming still too much art) again.
First, you make an implicit assumption that it is the duty of *only* the
school to generate what industry needs.
Excuse me, but it is not. Industry is supposed to *train* its workers.
Remember that? Yeah, I know, it's been a while since a corporation
has done that.
Second, much of what is happening is more due to the fact that the
*teachers* are becoming less proficient with time rather than the
students themselves. If industry was *really* interested in improving
the output of schools, the best solution would be to endow lots of
positions at public universities and community colleges so that those
teachers aren't making 1/3 to 1/2 (at best) of what they would be making
in industry.
The current state of the schools is due to the students making very
rational economic choices.
Some of you may be aware that MIT has recently dumped SICP and Scheme
(known as 6.001) as their intro to computer programming. I don't go to
MIT so maybe I shouldn't care but it seems a shame that such a well
received and respected program is being changed when none of the
fundamentals of programming or the concepts being in the class have
changed.
As I understand it, though, the curriculum is switching to Python but is
also adding the concepts of how to control real robots. That means that
concurrency is going to move up in importance.
And, as I have said, I, personally, have *never* been that fond of SICP.
"The Little Schemer" and "The Seasoned Schemer" do a *much* better job
of introducing most of the same fundamental CS concepts, and you don't
even realize it.
-a
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