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From: Tim Pierce <twpierce@midway.uchicago.edu>
Subject: Re: Dismal state of CS (Was: Comparison of languages for CS1 and CS2)
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Date: Thu, 24 Aug 1995 16:10:46 GMT
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In article <41f6r8$75k@tokamak.viewlogic.com>,
Przemek Skoskiewicz <przemek@tokamak.viewlogic.com> wrote:

>I didn't say that the answer was easy or that it was laying in front of us
>waiting to be picked up.  Yet I don't see much effort in the computer science
>to take stock of the situation and do something about it beside pointing out
>that it's more of an art than an engineering discipline.  The more such an
>attitude persists, the more it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.

Unfortunately, though much of what you say is true, it is a
political impossibility.  If computer practitioners had not
discouraged people from thinking of computers as "engineering,"
it would probably not have achieved the position in education
it now holds.  Presently, to further higher education in the
computer disciplines, it is important that people not consider
it a vocational study.

In fact, I think the underlying problem here is that people
think of engineering programs as "vocational," and furthermore
of "vocational" disciplines as something to be snubbed in
traditional educational curricula.  That's not to say that
Yale should introduce a major in metal shop, but just that
I see a tendency among those in higher education to look down
in tremendous disdain at any subject which might prove even
slightly practical in an industrial sense.

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