On Sep 13, 2004, at 10:48 AM, Josh Close wrote:

> On Mon, 13 Sep 2004 09:21:39 -0500, Josh Trutwin
> <josh at trutwins.homeip.net> wrote:
>> On Mon, 13 Sep 2004 07:58:38 -0500 (CDT)
>> Adam Maloney <adam at whee.org> wrote:
>>
>>>> The U's C++ programming class [for engineers/non-majors] used
>>>> Deitel & Deitel's C++ book.
>>>
>>> Interesting - I was a CSci major, but never took C++.
>>
>> Back in my day (only about 10 years ago) we did C/C++.  I'm teaching
>> one of the beginning programming courses at Metrostate this year and
>> it's all in Java.  Cannot say for sure if I really agree with that or
>> not for teaching basic programming.
>>
>> Josh
>
>
> I think java is a waste of time for csci. As a beginning programming
> course it could teach the fundamentals, but I've heard of schools
> wanting to switch from C++ to java for csci majors..... Java is just
> too slow..... I can't see it being used for much more than web
> applications IMHO.

the point of using java as the programming language in csci coursework 
is to emphasize the principles behind software engineering and to do so 
with something that has an acceptably developed toolkit.  from that 
perspective, java is a decent language to learn on.  one would hope 
that the objective in a csci curriculum isn't to churn out coders but 
to develop engineers, which are capable of picking up any appropriate 
tool and solving the problem at hand.

-- 
steve ulrich                       sulrich at botwerks.org
PGP: 8D0B 0EE9 E700 A6CF ABA7  AE5F 4FD4 07C9 133B FAFC


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