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Followup On Java As "Damaging" To Students

Posted by kdawson on from the many-are-called-but-few-are-chosen dept.

hedley writes "A prior article on the damage Java does to CS education was discussed here recently. There was substantial feedback and the mailbox of one of the authors, Prof Dewar, also has been filled with mainly positive responses. In this followup to the article, Prof. Dewar clarifies his position on Java. In his view the core of the problem is universities 'dumbing down programs, hoping to make them more accessible and popular. Aspects of curriculum that are too demanding, or perceived as tedious, are downplayed in favor of simplified material that attracts a larger enrollment.'"

2 of 626 comments (clear)

  1. Re:@_@ by M.+Baranczak · · Score: 5, Informative

    Exactly. If I recall, he was mainly talking about the fact that low-level system concepts aren't being taught. Java was only incidental to the argument, but the /. summary made it seem like another stupid language flamewar. Java is a high-level language: of course you won't be using it to write kernel code.

  2. And this is why... by theJML · · Score: 3, Informative

    This is why things are getting more and more bloated. I learned in basic and was quite glad when I got to c that I was learning something closer to what actually goes on. I had 3 Pascal classes in HS and shortly into them I found out just how powerful Assembly really is. Luckily I had a teacher that let me use that knowledge with inline statements on assignments. Things just worked, and worked quickly.

    There are trade offs to be made. Sure you can probably hack something together using less lines in Java or .NET, but I know for a fact, there's no GOOD reason to have to install a 120MB .NET install for some of the simple control panels and apps that are out there (ATI, I'm looking at you...). I remember when people tried to make their programs smaller and more efficient, finding ways to both put it on a floppy, and run quickly on slow hardware. Now these young whipper snappers use some high level interpreters and say screw the extra cycles, Proc's are cheap. Corps aren't worried about running quickly, or taking up small amounts of memory with elegant programs. They just want it released. Now. No time to dilly-dally on making "good" code, just gotta keep cranking it out. If it's slow, just up the requirements. I long for the days of assembly and low level programming...

    --
    -=JML=-