Another article on about plunging computer science education requirements from a couple of college professors who have witnessed the decline first-hand:

Let us propose the following principle: The irresistible beauty of programming consists in the reduction of complex formal processes to a very small set of primitive operations. Java, instead of exposing this beauty, encourages the programmer to approach problem-solving like a plumber in a hardware store: by rummaging through a multitude of drawers (i.e. packages) we will end up finding some gadget (i.e. class) that does roughly what we want. How it does it is not interesting! The result is a student who knows how to put a simple program together, but does not know how to program. A further pitfall of the early use of Java libraries and frameworks is that it is impossible for the student to develop a sense of the run-time cost of what is written because it is extremely hard to know what any method call will eventually execute. A lucid analysis of the problem is presented in [4].

We are seeing some backlash to this approach. For example, Bjarne Stroustrup reports from Texas A & M University that the industry is showing increasing unhappiness with the results of this approach. Specifically, he notes the following:

I have had a lot of complaints about that [the use of Java as a first programming language] from industry, specifically from AT&T, IBM, Intel, Bloomberg, NI, Microsoft, Lockheed-Martin, and more. [5]

He noted in a private discussion on this topic, reporting the following:

It [Texas A&M] did [teach Java as the first language]. Then I started teaching C++ to the electrical engineers and when the EE students started to out-program the CS students, the CS department switched to C++. [5]

Computer science needs to fork and create a "technical" branch X that fulfills the analogy:

electrician:electrical engineer::X::computer science

Rand Simberg agrees.

(HT: GeekPress.)

0 TrackBacks

Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Colleges Don't Teach Computer Science Anymore 2.

TrackBack URL for this entry: https://www.mwilliams.info/mt5/tb-confess.cgi/4736

Comments

Supporters

Email blogmasterofnoneATgmailDOTcom for text link and key word rates.

Site Info

Support