Path: csiph.com!x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net!usenet.pasdenom.info!aioe.org!eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Eric Sosman Newsgroups: comp.lang.java.programmer Subject: Re: Style Police (a rant) Date: Tue, 20 Sep 2011 07:36:24 -0400 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 24 Message-ID: References: <4e6d1fc5$0$308$14726298@news.sunsite.dk> <9drbm7FtpjU1@mid.individual.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Injection-Date: Tue, 20 Sep 2011 11:36:31 +0000 (UTC) Injection-Info: mx04.eternal-september.org; posting-host="f8igmItKsWs6nM5YanFxAA"; logging-data="14200"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1/x17ygAgPuglV3VCTyPqke" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:6.0.2) Gecko/20110902 Thunderbird/6.0.2 In-Reply-To: <9drbm7FtpjU1@mid.individual.net> Cancel-Lock: sha1:fE9hRyQhQ0implgvKzGnQlu1+v8= Xref: x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net comp.lang.java.programmer:8172 On 9/20/2011 7:28 AM, blmblm@myrealbox.com wrote: > In article, > Eric Sosman wrote: >>[...] >> Ponder this, while thinking about the average Computer Science >> curriculum. "Students, today you will implement an AVL tree." Bah! >> > > Well, yes, but .... You don't think there's pedagogical value > in having students reinvent some fairly basic wheels? (I'm a bit > uncertain myself -- it's hard not to think that every programmer > should do some of these basic things *ONCE*, since otherwise there's > some basic understanding that's lost, but then again the knowledge > base keeps expanding, and expanding, and maybe these days it really > is so much more important to know how to use the building blocks > than to create them that nothing is gained by making sure you *know* > how to create them.) "Students, today you will build computers. At each lab bench you'll find a pile of sand and a furnace ..." -- Eric Sosman esosman@ieee-dot-org.invalid