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From: adaworks@netcom.com (AdaWorks)
Subject: Re: Comparison of languages for CS1 and CS2
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This thread is amusing:

Philip Machanick (philip@cs.wits.ac.za) wrote:

: There are even those who argue that Smalltalk will become the future
: language of business computing, 

  What future?  Five years? Ten years? Nothing I learned in college several
  decades ago, with the exception of some mathematics, conforms to currently
  accepted practice.  Even the theories proposed in my class in Shakespeare
  are apparently now regarded as obsolete.

  Someone used the expression, language du jour.  If we insist on letting
  our students lead us instead of us leading them, we are doing them a
  great disservice.  We should be providing sound foundations in current
  ideas, including ideas that are not yet a part of industry practice.

  A programming language is incidental to the process of educating our
  computer science and software engineering students.  We should be letting
  them know that, even with the proliferation of languages, none is perfect,
  all are flawed, and they should not become attached to a language anymore
  than they should become attached to a particular hardware architecture or
  operating system.  

: so there's no telling what industry will
: want next. 

  If students are prepared for the inevitable perturbations that drive
  industry decisions, made aware that such decisions frequently reflect
  the worst possible policy, and understand the need to be professionally
  resilient, the programming language we choose will be irrelevant.  

: When you are planning for a 3-5 year horizon (depending on your
: degree length and expected completion time), doing what industry wants
: _now_ has to be flakey. If that's how we planned our curriculum, we'd
: currently be graduating students who'd spent the last 3 years learning
: Lotus 1-2-3 on DOS. And we all know how useful _those_ skills would be
: now.

  Exactly! One of my early mentors was a highly respected scientist known
  for his ability to express complex ideas with great clarity.  One day
  I had the opportunity to be alone with him over a sandwich.  I asked him
  what he would change in his education.  He said, "I would study more 
  history."

  I believe that students should understand the technical issues in the 
  context of their history.  They should see the dead languages, operating
  systems, computer designs, and methods rotting in the junkyard of progress,
  and understand that what they learn today, regardless of how intellectually
  enchanting it may be, will end up in that same junkyard.

  All we can do is try to instill a sense of intellectual discipline,
  an openess to new ideas, and an enthusiasm for challenging current
  ideas with new ones.  As a by-product, they may also make some long-term
  contribution.  

  So far, programming language debates serve more to obscure the real
  engineering challenges rather than to elighten us.  

  Sorry for the preaching.

  Richard Riehle
  adaworks@netcom.com
-- 
                                             adaworks@netcom.com
