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Professors Slam Java As "Damaging" To Students
jfmiller call to our attention two professors emeritus of computer science at New York University who have penned an article titled Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow? in which they berate their university, and others, for not teaching solid languages like C, C++, Lisp, and ADA. The submitter wonders whether any CS students or professors would care to respond. Quoting the article: "The resulting set of skills [from today's educational practices] is insufficient for today's software industry (in particular for safety and security purposes) and, unfortunately, matches well what the outsourcing industry can offer. We are training easily replaceable professionals... Java programming courses did not prepare our students for the first course in systems, much less for more advanced ones. Students found it hard to write programs that did not have a graphic interface, had no feeling for the relationship between the source program and what the hardware would actually do, and (most damaging) did not understand the semantics of pointers at all, which made the use of C in systems programming very challenging."
Yeah, I just read a press release from the FAA blasting driver training courses. Apparently, flight students who just got their drivers licenses were not able to navigate in the air, execute banks, take-off, or land properly.
Students have to start somewhere. It's easier to start with simple stuff than to try to cram their heads full of everything all at once.
If they teach you only one programming language, yes, they damage you.
In the course of my CS education (early 90s), they started with Pascal when they explained algorithmical basics.
Later courses were in C for OS and networking, while other courses used about everything from PROLOG to ADA.
You learn that some paradigms map to certain types of problems better (or worse) than others. So don't open sockets in
Prolog (I have seen'em do it man) , and don't do AI in C.
a quote: "if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail".
There going to plenty of flames on this topic.
As someone who programs mainly in java, I have to say they have a point. Surely a degree in CS should get someone familiar with all forms of higher order programing (both OO and functional). They should also have a reasonably solid understanding of basic hardware architecture and how that affects programs.
Unfortunately this does not seem to be the case at least in NZ. Some don't even know about basic complexity ideas and often have little to zero mathematics under there belt.
I did not do CS but physics. I was required to do Assembly,basic,C,matlab,R,Lisp,Java,C++,Haskell and a bunch of others I don't care to mention (Like PLC's and FPGA stuff).
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
Where I go to school, just this year we switched from teaching the introductory classes in Java to a combination of Python, then C, then Java. I think that this is much better than using any particular one of those languages the whole time. It gives the student experience with more different concepts and from that I think they can begin to see how everything works together. Also, starting with something simpler than Java/Eclipse seems to make it a lot easier the first few weeks of the course.
One thing I have noticed though, is a complete lack of security related training. Something about calling eval() on every input just to parse integers makes me cringe. I guess the idea is that worrying to much standard practices keeps people from thinking creatively or something. Unfortunately, it also seems like a good way to get into a lot of bad habits.
I would suggest being taught a programming language such as D, at least in addition. Although the transition from C/C++ to D can be painful, D contains many similarities with C/C++ such as speed, except it's much tidier and has many of the advantages of Java syntax whilst maintaining the power of C/C++ if necessary (optional pointers, optional manual garbage collection etc.).
Sooner or later, languages are going to evolve, and surely it's only a matter of time before something D-like is going to be used anyway. Might as well make the switch sooner rather than later.
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
OK, this hit one of my hot buttons. Before I continue, though, let me preface my statement by saying that I don't disagree with the article (which is right on the button). But I disagree with the way the summary characterizes the situation.
I totally agree that universities shouldn't be teaching Java exclusively. They need to teach the basics of modular, functional, declarative and oo languages. Why? Certainly *not* to fill "software engineering" positions!!! A university's role is to do research, not to act as some technical college. OK, I can see having a programming course aimed at creating programmers for industry if it's going to pay the bills at the uni. But *don't* make that your "Computer Science" course!!
Computer Science should be science (well, math anyway). Universities should be getting the 5 or 10 graduates they need that will move on to academia (or industry research) later in their careers. Because right now, *nobody* is getting taught Computer Science! Lately I've been reading papers posted on http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/ Regularly I have to go back to the basics and learn extremely fundamental theory because nobody *ever* taught them to me in the first place. Half the time I think, "OMG, I never even knew this existed -- and it was done in 1969!!????"
More and more lately, I've been wanting to phone my University up and ask for my tuition back.
If you want to learn how to program in a professional setting, there's nothing better to do than just start writing code. Get your chops up. Then find some big free software projects and start fixing bugs. Learn how to use the tools (configuration management, etc). Learn how to interact with the other programmers. That's all you really need (well, that and a quick automata and grammar course so that I don't have to look at yet another context free grammar being "parsed" by regular expressions).
But right now, where do you go if you want to actually learn theory? I guess the library... And getting back to the point, this is essentially what the paper is suggesting. Students need to learn all these things because they are relevant to the field. A university supports industry by doing basic research. If you don't understand the concepts that they point out, you just can't do that. Paraphrasing from the article, having a university course that's meant to pad out a student's resume is shoddy indeed.
I am a headhunter for high end roles at investment banks, and we are close to classifying CompSci as a "non degree", along with media studies, languages, etc.
Java is fine for teaching design patterns, and classical algorithms like Quicksort, or binary search.
But you can't do operating systems, and the success of Java in isolating you from any notion of the hardware is actually the problem.
We have already blacklisted courses like the one at Kings College, because they teach operating systems in Java.
Yes, really.
Their reason apparently is that it is "easier".
I have zero interest in kids who have studied "easy" subjects.
The world is a bigger, more competitive place, how many jobs do you think there are for people who have an easy time at college ?
Java is part of the dumbing down of CS.
A computer "expert" is not someone who knows template metaprogramming in C++, or compiler archaeology in BCPL, or the vagaries of the Windows scheduler.
It is someone who understands computers at multiple levels, allowing them to choose which one illuminates the problem at hand.
To be wise in computers you choose whether to think of something as a block of bytes, quadwords, a bitmap, a picture, or a buffer overflow pretending to be porn. If also have the option of understanding flash vs static RAM, virtual memory, or networked storage, all the better. I doubt if even 1% of CS grads could write code to turn this BMP into a JPG, or even explain the ideas behind this. In my experience, 50% could not work out how to develop a data structure for a bitmap that used palettes.
I have interviewed CS grads with apparently good grades who could not explain any data structure beyond arrays.
Any CS grad who sends us their CV with bullshit like "computers and society" or "web design" has their CV consigned to trash with no further reading.
A CS should be able to write a web server, not be an arts graduate who didn't get laid.
C++ makes you think at multiple levels, unlike Java, you simply cannot avoid thinking about your system from patterns to bytes. This may be good or bad for productivity, and I'm sure we risk a flame war here.
But I am entirely convinced you need to hack your way through a "real" system.
How can someone understand the Linux kernel without C & C++ ?
Is someone really fit to be called a computer scientist if like >50% of the Computer "Scientists" we interview for very highly paid jobs, show actual fear of working at that level.
They have the same "way above my head" attitude that a mediocre biologist might have to applying quantum theory to skin disease.
Partly, as in the Kings College debacle it is lazy mediocre lecturers, but also CompSci grads frankly are not that smart, so they need their hands held.
Although the seats get filled, they quality is in monotonic decline.
Dominic Connor,Quant Headhunter
I you make everyone special, nobody is really special.
Every time someone tells me that there are no pointers in Java I laugh a little. EVERYTHING in java that isn't a scalar is actually referenced through pointers. That is, you declare the pointer variable and then "new" the object into place.
They are just incredibly _boring_ pointers. You cannot math on them. There is no sense of location to those pointers. But the absence of interesting pointer operations, and the absence of the _semantic_ _copy_ operation is what all this alleged pointerlessness is all about.
I have only two _Real_ problems with java... (okay three if you count the complete requirement that you constantly have to deal with exceptions even when you know they cannot really happen, and if they did, you would want the thing to abort all over the place... but I digress)
(1) Java has no useful destructors because no object has predictable scope. If you think finalize methods are the same as destructors then don't bother responding, you don't know what destructors are...
(2) Since everything is a pointer in Java, you have to bend over backwards to pass-by-value. The fact that the language doesn't even begin to provide copy-construction semantics. What a miserable PITA.
Now the _dumbest_ thing about java is that they were so set against multiple inheritance that they never bothered to ask themselves why _every_ OO language starts out life without multiple inheritance only to have to add it later. By making everything a proper linear subclass of Object, they left themselves with having to graft on "interfaces" which is just multiple inheritance with the "bonus" of completely preventing default implementations. (Which lead to delegation etc.)
The way the language keeps sprouting things it claims to never have and never need, well it's very like watching a clown car endlessly explode with ridiculous archetypes. After a while it just isn't funny any more.
So yea, teaching people Java as an introductory language is something of a disservice if you ever want to make them truly think about programming and what makes some things machine smart, while others are machine stupid.
--- BUT ---
I worked in education for years. The fundamental problem with computer science education is that it is being taught by computer scientists instead of educators. We are stuck learning from the people who learned from the people who made it up. None of these people ever learned to EFFECTIVELY IMPART INFORMATION.
Consequently, the students are largely unemployable on the day of graduation.
The classic computer curricula seems to consist of throwing three or four languages at a kid in the hopes that they will "just kind of figure out this programming stuff."
The field of computer science has not yet come up with a "basic theory"... a starting place... The list of things a student simply must know before you start filling their head with syntax.
And so we are a bunch of prelates training our acolytes in our special, individualized deeper mysteries.
And that's what everybody is doing worldwide, so our graduates are just as lame as everyone else's...
Cue "Enter the Gladiators"...
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
People learn a lot through failure and pain. C is clearly the perfect choice when you look at it this way.
Last year I was in the decidedly odd position of having to teach third year CS students (who had primarily used Java), what pointers were, how memory allocation worked, and how to use C.
That they didn't know C wasn't too surprising. That they didn't have more than a basic grasp of memory management was shocking. They were also completely baffled when it came to not using an IDE to develop software. Makefiles had to be explained several times.
I've grumbled many times about this concentration on Java, and the resultant lack of detailed understanding about programing, but each time I did so at my university I was disregarded, and someone always trotted out that age old nonsense "not re-inventing the wheel".
I mean, sure, I see the point, but surely you should have a basic idea of how wheels are made?
I have to agree with the article. At Uni I was taught java much to my detriment and annoyance (I had taught myself VB6 prior to going to uni so wasnt a newbie to programming).
I find I am now having to teach myself C++, and am struggling in a lot of areas that had I been taught in Uni I would be a lot more confident in.
In Australia, universities are spewing out people who can pass a test but cant think in programming terms to save their life.
I was rolling on the ground laughing when I saw the problems people were having making a simple Sudoku program in C#.
Once they were done drag/dropping all the UI elements, they all got stuck.
Mind you your right about they are teaching what they think employers want.
We didnt get to see a *nix system let alone use one.
Although that may be because of that rather large donation Microsoft gave.......
99% of what you learn as a programmer you don't learn at college anyways (at least the people who don't totally suck at programming). Furthermore, unless you have one-on-one mentoring from a senior programmer or professor who has at least 10 years of solid professional coding experience under their belt, not much else is going to help you other than you and yourself in maturing as a programmer.
Most CompSci college graduates are totally unproductive on their first job. They can be put to work on trivial things, but no matter what school they came from, they are just going to need a lot of hand-holding to make it through the first year. That is just how it is. Doing coursework at school is no substitute for coding on a meaningful project, whether it be work related, something open-source related, or just something for fun. That is the honest to god's truth as a software developer for over 12 years now and I don't even consider myself even that wisened in the field (maybe after 20 years I will feel differently).
Now, with respect to Java as an introductory programming language, it is not bad but not great either, however the purpose of any introductory course to anything should be to capture the interest of the people who are curious enough to take the course in the first place. Back in college, we started with C (most of my peers had already been programming since they were teething but this was CMU) and if not for my persistent no quit attitude in life, I probably would of given up programming right then and there because spending your entire night trying to debug a trivial program not because you didn't understand the material but because of one stupid uninitialized pointer turns a lot of people off right then and there who may have had the potential to be great programmers, but because their first impression of programming was so bad, they gave it up before they got to learn more about how great programming really is.
Oh yeah, and the not relevant at all math courses didn't really help much either. Whenever in your career you need to use some advanced calculus or discrete math, you will have likely forgotten about 99% of it and need to look it all up in a book anyways. Besides, 99% of programming projects in the real world basically involve high school level algebra and not much else. What separates the productive programmers from the unproductive ones is not who got a better grade on their math course back in college, but those who innately understand systems and are willing to make the extra effort to learn all about the gazillion design patterns available to programmers so that when they are faced with a difficult project, they will not waste inordinate amounts of time reinventing the wheel.
As for understanding computing at a rather low-level, as is the case with a class in operating systems, then yah Java might not be such a great choice, but then again learning C is easy because C is made up of very simple constructs (C++ is another story). However, using C productively just requires a crapload of practice/experience to be good with, not necessarily a whole lot of computing expertise. In addition, the mastery of whatever API's you happen to be basing your career on is paramount as well. In the real world, employers don't want to hear "but I can learn anything quickly" because mastering some API's can take 6 months or more so if you come out of university with no specific skill sets, it is going to be really hard to get that first job because unless you can be productive soon (or even on day one), you are useless as far as employers are concerned. Also, though I don't program in Win32 professionally myself, from my understanding it takes at least 3 years of non-stop work with those API's just to be semi-proficient in them. Professionally, most of my work over the years has been in Java, and Java is probably scary to a lot of neophyte programmers these days because since 1.5, it has unfortunately turned into the bastard child of complexity like its twisted sister C++.
Last but not
I am not especially fond of Java myself. In fact, my focus has been precisely with lower level languages like the ones mentioned in the summary. I would love to work with these languages, preferably with tasks that where algorithmically and mathematically challenging etc.
.NET or Java jobs. The summary makes it sound like there is a great demand for my skills, but where are the jobs? /David
But I have not been able to find any such jobs. Job databases show 90%
Exactly. C is best thought of as a very powerful assembly preprocessor. I know that sounds harsh but when I look at a chunk of C code I have a pretty good idea of the assembly language the compiler is going to emit. Even with C++ that works to a certain extent.
With Java and most other 'friendly' languages you have literally no way of knowing what is going on under the hood unless you are prepared to invest a lot more time and effort than is available to the average comp-sci student.
With C that's as close as a single flag on your compile line and you can study the generated code until you're tired of it.
MP3 Search Engine
Java is one more step in evolution which normally the professors hate because it moves them away from the machine. But mankind has more important things to do (watching LOST and Sopranos) than twiddling with RPG.
Wrong. Java is a step *back*. Not because of the abstraction, mind you, but simply because Java is such a severely limited language. 30-40 years ago amazing new things were developed in CS, none of these are included in Java. Lambda? Map-Reduce? Purely functional code? Caml-style pattern matching? Conditions? People say Java made C++ obsolete, which is completely wrong, since C++ is far more powerful than Java (thanks to generic programming and metaprogramming). Just have a look at Boost, or C++0x, and try to replicate the features in Java - WITHOUT runtime overhead (this is one key feature of generic/meta programming - a lot of computation can be done at *compile*-time).
Actually, the next step in evolution should be Lisp, since it is one of the the most powerful and flexible languages in existence. There is nothing in the language that intrinsically prohibits Lisp performing as well as C++, its mostly the tools that lack development (for comparison, g++ has had a hell of a lot of improvements; the 2.x series was awful). If you avoid certain things like eval, Lisp code can be optimized well enough. There is a Scheme compiler called Stalin which does just that, and it can even outperform comparable C code.
So, if you want to abstract away from the machine, why use Java instead of Lisp?
IMO there are other reasons for Java:
1) its a braindead easy language.
2) you only need mediocre programmers, since Java is easy enough for them, and there are much more mediocre programmers than good ones.
3) as a consequence, programmers are expendable, jobs can be outsourced etc. One C++/Lisp/Haskell expert could replace an entire Java team. Not good for the company, since this guy becomes indispensable, and can demand more salary etc.
4) Universities can claim to have more success in teaching, since the number of guys with a CS degree is higher.
5) Companies need less teaching courses, because of (1).
6) Java has been overhyped for a while now, and many CTOs are so clueless, they just buy into it.
Well, you can disagree at my opinion about Java, but it is a fact that CS students *should* learn about the functional paradigm, what lambdas are, closures, and so on as well as what pointers are, how the memory works, what the garbage collector actually does etc. However, this is not the case - and THIS is a serious problem.
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I have to say, the idea that you can not only graduate from college but consider yourself to have received a "well rounded education" while having learned nothing but ALGOL-syntax C-derived languages is quite sad. During my CS degree, I learned C, C++, MATLAB, Java, Lisp, ML, Prolog, and a made-up language we wrote a compiler for, and I feel a bit deprived at not having done more. In my opinion, the idea that only languages which look like C are significant or worth learning is one of the more damaging things floating around CS today.
The way I see it, a university education is supposed to teach you theory and provide a "well rounded education." It irritates me when I hear the classic "why do I have to take social science/english/art, I came here to learn how to program."
Computer science is theory and math. Computers and langauges are the tools used to explore these concepts. The specific languages you learn in the university doesn't really matter; anyone with a CS degree and half a brain can pick up new languages within a very short amount of time.
I think it would be a very bad move for universities to cater to the corporate world. If you want to just learn programming, get some certs or buy a book. If you want an education, go to the university.
I got nothin'
1. Mathematics requirements in CS programs are shrinking.
The reason is because Computer Science has developed into a discipline that is no longer pure mathematics. There's only so many courses you can squeeze into four years.
2. The development of programming skills in several languages is giving way to cookbook approaches using large libraries and special-purpose packages.
Guess what, that's what building real software is like today. We don't need people that can write quicksort in obscure unused languages but people that can grasp systems of millions of lines of code. Ada doesn't prepare you for that because it is a toy language that never really was adopted outside of the academic world. It has no good, widely used frameworks & libraries like you find in the real world. People don't use it for a whole range of software systems that you find in the real world and to prepare you for this real world there are simply much better languages around these days.
3. The resulting set of skills is insufficient for today's software industry (in particular for safety and security purposes) and, unfortunately, matches well what the outsourcing industry can offer. We are training easily replaceable professionals.
I agree that skills are important. A good prof can teach those using pretty much any turing complete language if it needs to be done. Java isn't half bad for teaching a whole lot of important CS concepts and theory. And unlike Ada, people actually use it. As for C and C++ they are useful languages to learn of course. Many colleges still do.
But of course two ex profs working for adacore are hardly objective. Ada is as dead as latin. It has some nice features but nothing you won't find somewhere else. Keeping professional skills up to date is as important for professors as it is for students. Having done a Ph. D. in software engineering & architecture and having practiced my skills in several companies, my view is that one of the largest problems in computer science education is teachers who have never worked on real, industrial sized software systems and continue to send students into industry with a lot of misguided & naive ideas about how to build software. Most SE teachers out there simply have no clue what they are talking about. Software engineering is a skill learned in practice because the teachers in university mostly lack the skills required to properly prepare students. That's the sad reality.
Jilles
But, the whole reason to GO to a University, is to get the skills/education to make more money when finished, than you would have if you had not gone.
That's not why I went to college. That's why you go to a trade school.
I went to college as a CS major because I loved programming. I went to college because I enjoyed learning, and wanted to round out my education in a lot of ways.
That I happened to be able to get a job after was because I was able to take all of the very abstract concepts I had learned and apply them to practical matters. But I had always been doing that on my own all through school anyway - why would I need school for that? Anyone can do that on their own, schools are there to teach you things that are hard to grasp or learn on your own.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Forth and Postscript are useful for what, learning stack based languages? I learned Forth for one reason - to hack the PPC mac OpenBoot (open firmware), also used on some Solaris and IBM systems. Postscript I mucked with a bit also for hacking (I enjoyed trying to get root in college when I was a bored lab TA). I was much more successful with OpenBoot, as postscript is more geared to page layout and it's harder to do programming type operations.
Lisp and Scheme I'll lump in "parenthesis hell." I've never seen the allure of list processing languages - they drive me nuts. In the real world, you'll probably never see them even for what it's known best for, AI (python or lua are much more useful these days).
Haskell I've never used and seems to be stuck in the university wasteland. Ruby and Rails seem more practical, but no more than Python. To be honest, I dislike python because it uses indent significance, the one thing I despised most about Make. I've been meaning to look at Ruby, as well, because I like the Smalltalk object model, but I'm not sure how much I like linebreak significant line endings.
As abusive as it sounds, languages like COBOL (banking/finance) or Ada (government/military) or even FORTRAN (mech-E) will get you a job faster than Haskell. Or learn RPG and dedicate your life to IBM and Unisys mainframes (*shudder*).
I think you are missing the mark here, the profs who wrote the original architects are both principals at a company that sells Ada tools. What they are complaining of really is the lack of demand for their stuff. Treating the argument seriously is a mistake.
I don't think that there was ever a time when Ada was a popular teaching language for any purpose other than coding in Ada. Same goes for COBOL, Fortran and such at this point.
Nobody would claim that there was a desperate need to teach CPL or BCPL, Pascal, or the like these days. They had their moment, they were found wanting. There are much better teaching languages these days and much better production languages.
These days I would probably teach either Java or C# as the intro language, depending on which is ahead at the time. I might teach C# to comp sci students simply to force the students to acknowledge the fact that they need to be able to adapt to new languages. Most other cases Java is most likely to be the most useful language.
The big change that came with Java is that when Java appeared it was the first time that a mainstream language was an acceptable teaching language. Pascal was popular in universities but the architecture was bjorked (arrays of ten elements are not a different type to arrays with eleven). The functional languages had dreadful performance and pawky support libs.
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If people could make good $$ without college, I doubt you'd see so many people trying to go....
Art majors
English majors
Performing arts majors
I could go on... I don't see how you have a valid point. I am not saying that the above fields are not worthy of pursuing, but people do not get into them for the money.
I got nothin'