Path: csiph.com!v102.xanadu-bbs.net!xanadu-bbs.net!feeder.erje.net!eu.feeder.erje.net!news.stack.nl!aioe.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: "Rod Pemberton" Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth Subject: Re: Epic Fail Date: Sun, 06 Apr 2014 16:40:26 -0400 Organization: Aioe.org NNTP Server Lines: 42 Message-ID: References: <7xfvlrfkjv.fsf@ruckus.brouhaha.com> <228fb0b6-f8af-4fd5-800d-b84a91d8aaa7@googlegroups.com> <7x7g72w93a.fsf@ruckus.brouhaha.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: CNsg4fVcCsvs3UaOgZtQCw.user.speranza.aioe.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed; delsp=yes Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Complaints-To: abuse@aioe.org User-Agent: Opera Mail/12.16 (Linux) X-Notice: Filtered by postfilter v. 0.8.2 Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.forth:29332 On Sun, 06 Apr 2014 15:28:57 -0400, Paul Rubin wrote: > I'm terrified to learn that C or C++ was ever used in academia except > maybe in some context like embedded development. There is a truly incredulous "Really?" waiting for you sir! Do you remember the other languages that were taught at colleges and universities 20 to 30 years ago? e.g., FORTRAN, COBOL, mainframe assembly, ... I don't know how C could be *anywhere* near as bad a choice as the other horrid languages colleges and universities once taught. The only exceptions would be Pascal and BASIC, and they didn't generally teach BASIC because it was unstructured and could lead to "spaghetti" code. Unfortunately, Pascal back then was "impotent" or "neutered." (Hey, you guys insist on using "carnal knowledge"...) Pascal simply couldn't do any low-level stuff back then. I.e., there is an accepted ideology in computer science (CS) departments as to what is an acceptable programming language to be taught and what isn't. > "Object-oriented programming is eliminated from the introductory > curriculum, because it is both anti-modular and anti-parallel by its > very nature, and hence unsuitable for our purposes. A proposed new > course on object-oriented design methodology will be offered at the > sophomore level for those students who wish to study this topic." See, see, see what I mean! There it is. That's a (new) CS department ideology. First it was "spaghetti" code, then it was "untamed pointers", and now it's apparently "object-oriented programming", being "reserved" for "advanced" students. It seems that all CS professors all hate the widely accepted languages and their programming concepts. Just ask Anton. He's teaching Forth now. That's like teaching Latin or Sumerian in a world that speaks English and Chinese. It's insane. I'm wondering if he's going to teach them how to patch concrete next. That's probably a far more useful life skill for the majority of students ... Rod Pemberton