He explicitly cites Java as part of the problem, and states why he thinks Java is a problem.
As far as being "Anti-Today's CS Education", how is it really any worse than the same system of 20 or 30 years ago? It isn't. And his arguments are the same as the failed arguments of those days. Same argument, different language.
There are problems to be solved, the same problems there were 20 years ago. If you read this article, I think you'll see that there's more to it than rebutting the anti-Java statements.
"He explicitly cites Java as part of the problem, and states why he thinks Java is a problem. "
No, he does not. I just went back through the article and nowhere does he fault Java as a programming language. He is faulting the current education system. If you read it differently, feel free to provide quotes that back up your point. Otherwise you are just arguing against a strawman.
"As far as being "Anti-Today's CS Education", how is it really any worse than the same system of 20 or 30 years ago? It isn't. And his arguments are the same as the failed arguments of those days. Same argument, different language. "
Again, had you read the actual interview, you would have seen he answered that:
>>To look back a few decades, universities once focused on programming languages that lent themselves to greater intellectual rigor, in Dewar’s view, like Fortran and Pascal.
But with the tech revolution of the 1990s, a blizzard of change swept through university CS departments.
“I can relate what happened at NYU and I think it’s probably pretty typical of many places,” he says. ”So we’re sitting around, and we ask, ‘What language should we teach?’ And it was “Oh, we’d like to teach Java.’ Now no one around the table actually knows Java. But they’re sure they want to teach it because it’s an upcoming language that the industry’s gonna use, and everyone will be doing everything in Java.”
A few years of Java is good for you. It's OO boot camp: once Java forces you to think OO 24/7, you'll have the right attitude to write OO Javascript, PHP, Python or whatever.
He's right that CS education is in crisis, and his attitudes are a big part of it. The troubles we have writing software aren't that we don't know enough combinatorics or internal memory data structures, but a whole set of problems in the chain of turning requirements into working products. Clear thinking about data modeling and user interfaces is important. So is project management, social skills, and a lot of things that get short shrift in the normal CS curriculum.
We need all of the above. But subjects like data structures and mathematics are the fundamentals. They are absolutely needed in an early CS education.
And I'm not sure an "OO boot camp" is all that healthy either. Once it forces you to think OO 24/7, it becomes difficult or even impossible to learn other techniques. OO is great for some things, not so great for others. I have seen plenty of abuses of OO techniques where they were not appropriate and where additional problems were introduced as the result.
Comments
Nick Brown replied ago:
He isn't "Anti-Java", he is "Anti-Today's Computer Science College Education System". Arguing against strawman does not make an effective rebuttal.
saundby replied ago:
He explicitly cites Java as part of the problem, and states why he thinks Java is a problem.
As far as being "Anti-Today's CS Education", how is it really any worse than the same system of 20 or 30 years ago? It isn't. And his arguments are the same as the failed arguments of those days. Same argument, different language.
There are problems to be solved, the same problems there were 20 years ago. If you read this article, I think you'll see that there's more to it than rebutting the anti-Java statements.
Nick Brown replied ago:
"He explicitly cites Java as part of the problem, and states why he thinks Java is a problem. "
No, he does not. I just went back through the article and nowhere does he fault Java as a programming language. He is faulting the current education system. If you read it differently, feel free to provide quotes that back up your point. Otherwise you are just arguing against a strawman.
"As far as being "Anti-Today's CS Education", how is it really any worse than the same system of 20 or 30 years ago? It isn't. And his arguments are the same as the failed arguments of those days. Same argument, different language. "
Again, had you read the actual interview, you would have seen he answered that:
>>To look back a few decades, universities once focused on programming languages that lent themselves to greater intellectual rigor, in Dewar’s view, like Fortran and Pascal.
But with the tech revolution of the 1990s, a blizzard of change swept through university CS departments.
“I can relate what happened at NYU and I think it’s probably pretty typical of many places,” he says. ”So we’re sitting around, and we ask, ‘What language should we teach?’ And it was “Oh, we’d like to teach Java.’ Now no one around the table actually knows Java. But they’re sure they want to teach it because it’s an upcoming language that the industry’s gonna use, and everyone will be doing everything in Java.”
raveman replied ago:
bla, bla, bla ....
paul_houle replied ago:
A few years of Java is good for you. It's OO boot camp: once Java forces you to think OO 24/7, you'll have the right attitude to write OO Javascript, PHP, Python or whatever.
He's right that CS education is in crisis, and his attitudes are a big part of it. The troubles we have writing software aren't that we don't know enough combinatorics or internal memory data structures, but a whole set of problems in the chain of turning requirements into working products. Clear thinking about data modeling and user interfaces is important. So is project management, social skills, and a lot of things that get short shrift in the normal CS curriculum.
Nick Brown replied ago:
We need all of the above. But subjects like data structures and mathematics are the fundamentals. They are absolutely needed in an early CS education.
And I'm not sure an "OO boot camp" is all that healthy either. Once it forces you to think OO 24/7, it becomes difficult or even impossible to learn other techniques. OO is great for some things, not so great for others. I have seen plenty of abuses of OO techniques where they were not appropriate and where additional problems were introduced as the result.
Ricky Clarkson replied ago:
I voted this comment down by accident, and can't undo it. I meant to upvote. Well said, Nick.
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