Laura's List - was Re: new years resolutions

[Nomad]

On Wed, 8 Jan 2003 20:06:12 +0100, "GerritM" <gmuller at worldonline.nl>
wrote:

>"Christopher A. Craig" <com-nospam at ccraig.org> schreef in bericht
>news:mailman.1041981151.15754.python-list at python.org...
><...snip..>
>> The first group would make arguments like "Why is the object oriented
>> programming class taught in SmallTalk?  Nobody uses SmallTalk, why
>> don't you teach it in Java?"  The second would make arguments like
>> "SmallTalk is one of the most pure OO languages available, Java is not
>> nearly as good for teaching OOD."
>>
>> I, along with most of the professors, was in the second group.  It
>> sounds like you are in the first.  For what it's worth, our professors
>> had no problem with informing people of trade schools in our area
>> where they could learn to program in Java or C++ or whatever, they
>> just refused to orient their curricula around current language trends.
>>
>> --
>> Christopher A. Craig <com-nospam at ccraig.org>
>> "Software hoarding is not a victimless crime." Richard Stallman
>>
>I would absolutely teach students multiple languages and stimulate them to
>understand advantages and disadvantages of different languages. A CS
>graduate should be able to program different languages and understand the
>trade-offs.
>
>regards Gerrit

I think the point is, if you can teach the pure theories of OO in
Smalltalk, then those theories, when understood, can be applied to
<your-language-of-choice>.

I've never done and CS at university level (I've been sorely tempted
to start again in CS, but I'm a biologist, and that's quite a leap),
but regardless, universities are about providing the understanding of
theories, processes, and the hows and whys of things.

Application of those is what happens in the "real world", but without
the understanding behind it, application is worth nothing, or worse
still, dangerous (e.g. what happens if I press this huge red button?)

-- 
Nomad

Wondering of the vast emptyness of the 'net
in search of something cool.