Academics up in arms about University Computer Science Courses

Two academics (Dr. Robert B.K. Dewar and Dr. Edmond Schonberg) at New York University have spoken out about the increased use of Java as a first language. The modern emphasis has moved away from the mathematical content of computer science towards a "cookbook approach" using large specialized libraries. Instead of training developers in a variety of languages they believe universities are turning out people with insufficient skills for programming in industry.

Thirty years ago, in my first and second years at University I learnt Pascal, Basic, Cobol and even some 6800 assembler. But that was only a third of the course. The rest was pure maths, applied maths and statistics. I was shocked at my last workplace when a new graduate starter, with an Honors Degree in Computer Science admitted that he didn't know binary or hexadecimal. Packing bits and using them as flags was a novel concept to him!

You can read the article which cites both C and C++ as languages that any developer ought to know!

• Link to What is a Programming language?
• Link to What is Software Engineering? article