Laura's List - was Re: new years resolutions

[Laura Creighton]

> Laura Creighton <lac at strakt.com> writes:
> 
> > I would dearly like it we could separate the people who want and
> > need advanced vocational training, from the people who want to become
> > academics, from the people who are only having their entrance into
> > the workforce delayed for some number of years.  
> > 
> 
> This is an interesting comment because I am on the other side of the
> issue, but feel the same way.  At the university from which I
> graduated there were two major factions in the computing department:
> those who thought the job of the department was to fill an immediate
> need in industry, and those who felt the job of the department was to
> educate students on the underlying premises and theories of computing.
> 
> The first group would make arguments like "Why is the object oriented
> programming class taught in SmallTalk?  Nobody uses SmallTalk, why
> don't you teach it in Java?"  The second would make arguments like
> "SmallTalk is one of the most pure OO languages available, Java is not
> nearly as good for teaching OOD."
> 
> I, along with most of the professors, was in the second group.  It
> sounds like you are in the first.  For what it's worth, our professors
> had no problem with informing people of trade schools in our area
> where they could learn to program in Java or C++ or whatever, they
> just refused to orient their curricula around current language trends.
> 
> -- 
> Christopher A. Craig <com-nospam at ccraig.org>

I've got to work on my writing skills if you can get that impression.
I was active spear-waver in the 'Object-Oriented Programming needs
to be taught in Smalltalk' camp, and member of the 'if they want
advanced vocational training in how to use the C++ language, which
God knows they need, how about we make a Professional Faculty of
Programming, teach that _there_' kabal.

Laura Creighton