Re: Education and security -- another perspective (was "ACM Queue - Content")

[Crispin Cowan <crispin () immunix com>]

Peter Amey wrote:


What is wrong with this picture ?

I see both of you willing to mandate the teaching of C and yet not
mandate the teaching of any of Ada, Pascal, PL/I etc.
     

Makes sense to me. what is the point of teaching dead languages like 
Ada, Pascal, and PL/I?  Teach C, Assembler, and Java/C# (for the 
mainstream), and some lisp variant (Scheme, ML, Haskell) and Prolog 
variant for variety. But Ada, Pascal, and PL/I are suitable 
only for a "history of programming languages" course :)
   


I do hope that is a sort of smiley at the end of your message.  Please.
 

It is a sort-of smiley. On one hand, I find the whole thing amusing. On 
the other hand, I find it patently absurd that someone would suggest 
that curriculum in 2004 would comprise Ada, Pascal, and PL/I, all of 
which are (for industrial purposes) dead languages.


On one hand, university should be about learning concepts rather than 
languages, because the concepts endure while the languages go in and out 
of fashion. Evidence: 20 years ago, when I was in college, "Ada, Pascal, 
and PL/I" only included one dead language :)  On the other hand, the 
students do need to get a job when they graduate, and we do them a 
disservice to not at least teach concepts using a language currently in 
use in industry.


There is also room for a lot of breadth in a college program. I was only 
overtly instructed in languages a few times, the rest were "read the 
book then do this assignment." But in that approach, I learned COBOL, 
Pascal, PL/M, 68000 assembler, C, C++, FORTRAN, VAX assembler, Prolog, 
LISP, and Maple.  Its not like this list needs to be short.


Crispin

--
Crispin Cowan, Ph.D.  http://immunix.com/~crispin/
CTO, Immunix          http://immunix.com