Re: The possibility of vms opening up?

Bill Gunshannon wrote:

"Instead what I'd like to claim is that Java is not, generally,
a hard enough programming language that it can be used to
discriminate between great programmers and mediocre programmers."

Since when did it become the purpose of a programming language to
"discriminate between great programmers and mediocre programmers"?

I presume he means with java , how do you know if someone is good at
programming in general, if a lot of subjects are not included, using a
harder language like c would be a better test.


"If I may be so brash, it has been my humble experience that there
are two things traditionally taught in universities as a part of a
computer science curriculum which many people just never really fully
comprehend: pointers and recursion."

Must have gone to the wrong schools. Both subjects are well represented
here and used frequently by students in projects at the upper levels which
tends to show that they did understand them.

he obviously picked half a dozen and decided what they include and
don;t.

"You used to start out in college with a course in data structures,
with linked lists and hash tables and whatnot, with extensive use
of pointers."

Still do. Java can do both linked-lists and hash-tables. And it can
do the same jobs in what it (and apparently the industry) thinks are
better methods. (Don't get me wrong, I hate Java but I am merely
pointing out this guys mistaken ideas regarding the current state of
CS education.)

same as my last answer...

"Those courses were often used as weedout courses:"

Say what!!! No course in college is intended as "weedout courses".
The purpose of college isn't to keep the numbers of people in a
particular field down (well, in some fields, maybe, but not CS.)

I thought he meant weedout in the sense . get more students to
graduate, make the university seem great and wonderfull as more have
graduated in CS, by simplying the course.

It just gets worse from here. Actually, he sounds like someone who
was probably told by one of his professors that he should be looking
into a differnt major.

From his biography he seems quite succesfull..

Just to get this back into line with the kind of things that I have
often discussed here, this is yet another example of how badly people
outside the education field understand it. And, until they do, ti will
continue to move in it's own direction ignoring any advice or direction
from those outsiders. Much to the detriment of both. (and VMS :-)

Does University of Scranton teach vms ?

.

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