An interesting read on Joel's view of Java based schools.
Wednesday, January 04, 2006
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Thoughts from the edge of teaching, software development and .NET.
1 comment:
I generally disagree with the the article although it does have some very sharp arguments:
1) Student's skills should be measured by their ability to solve problems not the tools they use. So if a student can solve tough problems (like these) just but using Java, he should be considered as good as another who uses C (and of course do know how to solve the problems).
2) I think Java or C# should be used as the introductory language not only because the industry is using them but also because they are neat and clean enough to be learnt quickly so that students can focus on studying algorithms, data structures and design skills... without having to spend to much time on struggling with the programming language, which is again, only the tool.
3) I do agree, though, that we should have some tough subjects at the beginning of the course to discourage students who are not well aware of the difficulty of being a programmer in the future. I think a subject like the proposed Algorithmatic problem solving should help. However, I do think that not all CS graduate become programmers, there are so many types of IT jobs that you may succeed in the industry without being a great programmer at all.
Thanks Andrew for sharing an interesting article.
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