Exam Board Deletes C and PHP From CompSci A-Levels

VitaminB52 writes "A-level computer science students will no longer be taught C, C#, or PHP from next year following a decision to withdraw the languages by the largest UK exam board. Schools teaching the Assessment and Qualifications Alliance's (AQA) COMP1 syllabus have been asked to use one of its other approved languages — Java, Pascal/Delphi, Python 2.6, Python 3.1, Visual Basic 6, and VB.Net 2008. Pascal/Delphi is 'highly recommended' by the exam board because it is stable and was designed to teach programming and problem-solving."

Comments

Dumbing Down

[bhunachchicken]

"The board "highly recommended" switching to Pascal/Delphi because it is stable and was designed to teach programming and problem solving. Teachers planning to use Java are warned that many universities are considering dropping it from their first year computer science programmes, "as has happened in the US"."

Okay, seriously - in London, where I work, I don't think any of these guys would be able to get a job once they had graduated. Job listings I have looked at demand the following skills:

Java (with Spring, Hibernate, Multi-threading, low latency, Swing, Junit)
C#
C/C++ (financial organizations still turn to C for high volume number crunching)
Unix / Linux (are they going to drop this next???)
SQL (Oracle, Sybase, SQL Server)
Subversion, Clearcase, CVS

None of this stuff can be picked up quickly, so the earlier you start, the better. And, no offense, but I rarely - if ever - see a job listing requesting Pascal/Delphi.

Is this a case of dumbing down or are students just becoming lazy(-er)..?

Re:Maybe I'm missing something

[MrZilla]

Maybe because resumes get sent to HR and management, not experienced programmers?

Exactly. When a manager is looking to hire a person, knowing that "we create our software using C", he expects to see "Knowledge of the C language" on the resume he gets.

Trying to argue that you extensive knowledge of Pascal, JAVA and Assembly for the given platform means you will be able to work efficiently anyways, since you'll very quickly pick up the C knowledge needed, probably won't get you hired, even if it is true.

Of course, there might be the special case where an intimate knowledge of setjump or the structure of the stack during a function call might be needed, but I think those cases are somewhat rare.