Ethics in abstract disciplines (was: Making a better textbook (was Re: The Deitel book))

[Michele Simionato]

Michael Hudson <mwh at python.net> wrote in message news:<7h3smycxeau.fsf at pc150.maths.bris.ac.uk>...
> Alan Kennedy <alanmk at hotmail.com> writes:
> 
> > These days, is there such a thing as a mathematics course that doesn't
> > involve extensive exposure to Computer Science?
> 
> Yes, the one I did at Cambridge (UK) had very little CS content (there
> were computer projects in the second and third years but you could
> ignore them if you chose to -- I didn't, but I know people who did).
> I think I could have attended three hours of lectures on how to
> program in Pascal (I *did* ignore those -- my projects were a bizarre
> melange of Python, Haskell and Common Lisp tied together by bash
> scripts).
> 
> I graduated in 2000; I don't think much has changed since ('cept it
> might be C and not Pascal now).
> 
> Cheers,
> M.

When I was studying Physics at the University of Padua (in the nineties)
we had an official booklet of the faculty with advices about the choice of 
non-mandatory courses. I still remember the sentence about computer science
courses. Translating quite literally from Italian it reads something like 
"In no case plans of studies involving CS courses from other faculties 
will be accepted by this Physics commission". I would not be surprised if
this politics was still enforced.

In more ten years of Physics (including the Ph.D.) I never had a single 
course about programming (excluding maybe two or three seminars in one of 
the laboratory course I had, but they were unofficial, not part of the course; 
we also had computer hours in the afternoon, but unofficial and not mandatory).

It could seems strange to somebody, but personally I second that politics.
Programming is a nice thing you can do for fun by yourself, but the 
University has to teach you the real thing, not to spend your time on
other topics. Whereas it is true that lots of physicist (and mathematicians) 
spend a lot of time on computers for their research, it is also true that 
there still many researchers which can completely avoid the computer (I
am one of them). 

I think that, at least in Europe, most of Physics and Mathematics course 
still do not involve extensive exposure to Computer Science. 

And this is a good thing.


--
Michele Simionato - Dept. of Physics and Astronomy
210 Allen Hall Pittsburgh PA 15260 U.S.A.
Phone: 001-412-624-9041 Fax: 001-412-624-9163
Home-page: http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~micheles/