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By aroman07
via theserverside.com
Published: Dec 09 2007 / 06:13

Edsgar W. Dijkstra once said: "It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration." Java CS student seem to be not much better than their predecessors.
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dzonelurker replied ago:

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YES!

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raveman replied ago:

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lol, funny stuff

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sigzero replied ago:

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NO!

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suhail replied ago:

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No

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plughead replied ago:

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Being a Java programmer, I was going to vote this down on principal... However, I actually went and read the article and discovered that it's actually quite a funny 'rant' that makes some interesting points about the state of CS education.

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willcode4beer replied ago:

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The majority of graduates still have no real comprehension of the fundamental concepts of programming.

Changing languages won't fix this. Unfortunately, the job market becomes the place where the filtering occurs (instead of the schools). Often, people suggest "harder" languages (for many reasons). The only reason a harder language works is because it can become a filter mechanism. What is needed are more filters. Unfortunately, most schools have an economic incentive to generate more CS/IS grads, regardless of their ability.

Compare to medicine, where the pre-med program is mostly designed to filter out potential doctors long before they hit medical school. Do doctors NEED advanced chemistry and mathematics? No, but, do you want someone who can't pass muster holding life and death in their hands?

Filtering isn't meant to be mean. If we filter out those who aren't cut for programming early, they still have time (in school) to change majors and to find a profession where they can be successful and happy.

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