From: nospam@example.net   
      
   On Wed, 26 Feb 2025, Salvador Mirzo wrote:   
      
   > 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.   
   >   
      
   OOP, yuck! It never worked well for me. ;) On the other hand, I never   
   worked as a professional programmer. ;)   
      
   --- SoupGate-DOS v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)