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CS Master's Degrees - US vs. EU Programs?
Monty asks: "I'm currently exploring my options and I've been wondering, is it worthwhile to seek education overseas--specifically the EU? Edsgar Dijkstra was of the opinion, though controversial, that American and European CS programs were fundamentally different (see his later writings in the E.W. Dijkstra Archives). What makes the EU interesting, in that light, is that it seems to have more openly embraced things like functional programming. So, if I want to focus my study on something of a more functional nature, are schools in the EU a better choice? What are the implications of returning to North America for employment with a foreign degree? Do they have to be accredited as proof of validity or are they usually recognized by themselves here in the US?"
Alright, procedural programming is obviously here to stay. There's a reason the Linux kernel is written in C. There are a lot of very nice things about OOP. The Java API is really is a good example of what wondeful things a well thought out class library can do for a language. But FUNCTIONAL programming, *homer shudder*. I've programmed in a couple of dozen languages, ranging from assembly, C and it's other procedural relatives, FORTH (which is pleasently unlike any other language), and I'm sorry to say, ML. ML is a highly functional language, and IMO THE most useless language ever. The only other language that even comes close is TCL. ML breaks every convention in ways that aren't even logical. ~ is the unary negation operator, for example, although I dunno of you can even really call it an operator in ML. It's not that it was particularly hard to learn, it's just that it sucked. The creators tout it as less error prone, more efficient, etc. Yeah everybody says that about their language. Trying to write simple programs in ML was like pulling teath. Give me FORTH any day over that crap heap. FORTH rules. Moore 4eva.
-73, de n1ywb
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