begin quoting Tracy R Reed as of Mon, Jan 14, 2008 at 01:34:31PM -0800: > 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 > > http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/ThePerilsofJavaSchools.html
I've been seeing stuff like this since forever. I suspect we'll always see this sort of thing. > 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. They're responding to student demand and industry requests. Seriously. I watched Pascal go out of favor, and C++ (briefly) come in to favor, due to (a) students complaining about having to learn too many languages and (b) 'industry' looking for entry-level programmers who were expert in C++. Fortunately, C++ didn't last long, and Java quickly replaced it; this made the students happy (Java was the new shiny at the time) and it made industry happy (same reason). Alas, Java's only a good introductory language compared to C++. > It seems like industry > is starting to put some pressure back on the schools to stop the > dumbing-down process and Heh. Hardly. They're partially responsible. > 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. Too much? Nah. Too little. Programs are literature. > 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. Perhaps they're expecting the high schools to take care of the basic introductory concepts, so they don't need to anymore. -- It's not like you show up for remedial arithmetic When you go to the university, unless you're thick. Stewart Stremler -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-lpsg
