Why certifying IT workers won't help

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Huh, they're still doing that?

"People with computing degrees frequently graduate with four years programming experience in unused languages.

For example, my school graduated a lot of pascal experts. Their logic was that the important thing was the theoretical side of programming.

IMHO that was b.s."

You will find that attitude at a lot of universities, I'm sure. The one I went to said that as well, except I graduated knowing how to program in C (this was in the early 90s). The way they handled languages was almost as though one could pick up the syntax, semantics, and the nuances easily by yourself, within the first week or so. I didn't agree with this approach.

They taught us Pascal as freshmen, and we continued to use it through our sophomore year. Then they taught us a bunch of other (useless) languages to give us exposure to different kinds of languages (object-oriented, functional, etc.). And then, in our senior year, all of the classes were taught in C. At first there was no introductory course in C. People were just expected to learn it themselves while taking the course. But later, after enough people complained, they added a half-semester course, which was great! It made taking those senior level courses that much easier, since I didn't have to learn it on the fly. And C is not necessarily an easy language to learn, even for a Pascal programmer. Even today, I believe C++ is taught in 4 semesters.

Still, in the early 90s, there was resistance from the department. I talked with my advisor about why the department didn't have an introductory course in C, and he was pretty adamant. "We're not a vocational school. What we give you is the foundational knowledge so that as conditions change out there, you can learn on your own what you need to know in order to apply this knowledge to whatever needs to be done." In a sense, he was right. C used to be a really popular language. Everyone was using it in the early 90s. But now even C++ is going out of style, apparently. Now the hot languages are Java and C#.

Last I checked, my alma mater now teaches C++ to freshman, and later introduces them to Java. For once, I think they're staying current!

Posted by: Mark Miller   Posted on: 05/03/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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