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From: mcdonald@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: Re: What is CS? (Was re First langu
Message-ID: <51200007@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu>
Date: 1 Apr 88 16:39:00 GMT
References: <1353@wor-mein.UUCP>
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Nf-ID: #R:wor-mein.UUCP:1353:uxe.cso.uiuc.edu:51200007:000:953
Nf-From: uxe.cso.uiuc.edu!mcdonald    Apr  1 10:39:00 1988



>I disagree with this entire line of argument, based on both my academic and
>professional experience.  If you have a good foundation in the generalities,
>then any decent computer language can be learned from a book.  That is exactly
>what I did with C at my first job (actually, I am somewhat dubious about C's
>qualifications as a "decent" language) - I was reasonably up to speed within
>a couple of weeks.  I certainly received no complaints from my employer.

I disagree seriously on this, if by "generalities" you mean theory. I
would say that learning ONE language COMPLETELY would be sufficient.
I also think it important that students be taught how to do at least
a few thing that the target language is NOT designed for: writing
a rudimentary editor in Fortran, or doing differential equations in Prolog..
That way they will see the reason for the Towel of Babel existing in
computer languages: it's there for a good reason.

Doug McDonald