Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!cmcl2!nrl-cmf!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!ucdavis!iris!windley
From: windley@iris.ucdavis.edu (Phil Windley)
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: Re: What is CS? (Was re First languages)
Message-ID: <1522@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu>
Date: 24 Mar 88 18:54:36 GMT
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Sender: uucp@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu
Reply-To: windley@iris.ucdavis.edu (Phil Windley)
Organization: U.C. Davis - College of Engineering
Lines: 15

While teaching programming to students in CS is important, I think we
should be careful not to give students the impression that CS is JUST a
collection of programming languages.  I have received mail from undergrads
at major US universities that say things like "what programming languages
should I know to be successful".  

I couldn't care less what language my students need to know to get a job
with IBM.  They should know how to program, they should be able to deal
with abstraction, they should be able to design algorithms, but they
shouldn't necessarily learn JCL, COBOL (ugh!), or even C because that's
what HP wants.  

Phil Windley
Robotics Research Lab
University of California, Davis