Re: university studies?

[Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams]

On Thu, 2 Aug 2001, Muzaffer Ozakca wrote:

>
> I don't think, one should learn all the "hot" languages of the day to
> become a good programmer. A computer science student should (and will)
> learn the theoretical background that lays beneath. Data structures,
> graph theory, computational linguistics, compiler theory, OS, AI, so on.
> Practical studies such as programming projects will let the students
> solid the theory. These thoughts are not actually mine, most of the
> computer science departments -more or less- follow a cirriculum
> appreciating these ideas, I think. However, a kernel (or systems)
> programmer should also know basics of microprocessors, interrupts, etc.
> and programming in assembly, besides the theory given in a university.
>
> After getting the theory and completing the understanding by practice,
> learning a programming language is just a detail. Always solving
> problems "C" style, may not be the best approach, a functional language
> may better suit the needs -usually not in our course.
>
> As far I could see, kernel programming (talking about the whole)
> requires the use of computer science, heavily.

I absolutely agree that learning programming languages isn't enough. However,
just learning algorithms and structures and doing programming projects isn't
enough either.

AFAIK, around where I am institutes of higher learning don't usually have a
great track record for exposing students to a wide variety of languages.
Usually it's Pascal and/or C/C++, with some Java mixed in. While they are
"nice" languages, there's a lot more to other languages than can be learned
from those four.

And having the theoretical background doesn't actually help you program. To
illustrate, here's a snippet of code similar to something I saw on a monitor
where I went:

typedef class {
  ...
} C;

main()
{
  C c;

  c.C();
    ...
};

While the student knew that objects have a constructor, he never realized
(was never taught?) that constructors are called implicitly.

Also, I did mention FP; I mentioned Lisp and XSLT as examples of FP languages.
And Python can be used in both structed and FP ways.

And yes, a course or two in digital electronics and microprocessors never
hurts either.

-- 
Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams  <[e-mail]>