From: smirzo@example.com   
      
   Rich  writes:   
      
   > Scott Dorsey  wrote:   
   >> Scott Dorsey  wrote:   
   >>>   
   >>>We also have a bunch of IT programs which are really business school   
   >>>programs with some computing added.  I think those are pretty much   
   >>>worthless, but they get a lot of students.   
   >>   
   >> Oh, and I will say that most of the students that I deal with   
   >> personally are not CS students at all but engineering students.  They   
   >> get one programming class, usually in Matlab, and no basic computer   
   >> literacy stuff at all.   
   >   
   > Just one programming class..... in Matlab???  For Engineering.  Ugh.   
   >   
   > I had (if memory serves) at least one Pascal class, one Fortran class,   
   > and an assembler (CDC Cyber 7000 - a really weird CPU on the inside)   
   > class, all required classes for Engineering.  Pascal class was trivial   
   > (had already done plenty of UCSD Pascal on Apple II in high-school) so   
   > just had to adjust to the small difference in the CDC Cyber Pascal we   
   > were using.  Fortran was similarly trivial, but oh did I come to hate   
   > Fortran in the end.  Just had to learn the "fortranisms", as I already   
   > understood the over-arching "how to program" aspects.  The assembler   
   > class was also itself trivial (had done loads of 6502 assembler by this   
   > point, and some 8086 assembler, provided one considered DOS's debug an   
   > 'assembler' of sorts).  Just had to "learn the language" rather than   
   > the "how to program" part.   
   >   
   > But, /just/ matlab.  That is so wrong on so many levels.   
      
   I know of a leading university that gives all engineering students (all   
   of them), two courses on Python.  The first course is just so students   
   get a minimum of the Python syntax---of course, the course design calls   
   it ``how to program''.  The second half of the year is to learn the very   
   basics of the so-called OOP and then some packages such as numpy, scipy   
   and matplotlib are *introduced*.   
      
   And what do we see in these courses?  Nearly all engineering students   
   consider them accessory to their degrees and so they try to ignore these   
   courses to the maximum because they need to work on calculus and physics.   
      
   And I can't blame them: these courses are totally uninteresting.  I   
   would have done the same.   
      
   --- SoupGate-DOS v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)