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CMU Eliminates Object Oriented Programming For Freshman

Posted by timothy on from the doesn't-seem-an-april-fool's-joke dept.

fatherjoecode writes "According to this blog post from professor Robert Harper, the Carnegie Mellon University Computer Science department is removing the required study of O-O from the Freshman curriculum: 'Object-oriented programming is eliminated entirely from the introductory curriculum, because it is both anti-modular and anti-parallel by its very nature, and hence unsuitable for a modern CS curriculum.' It goes on to say that 'a proposed new course on object-oriented design methodology will be offered at the sophomore level for those students who wish to study this topic.'"

3 of 755 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Hmmm ... by salesgeek · · Score: 4, Informative

    Um. No. Many modern libraries or "frameworks" (newfangled word for library) are OO. Most OSes remain written in classic system programming languages like C and assembly language. In fact, most frameworks start as object oriented wrappers for certain OS calls and cruft up from there.

    --
    -- $G
  2. Re:Hmmm ... by chthon · · Score: 3, Informative

    While I also disagree with the tone of the parent, I hope you understand that abstraction and code reuse are not features that originate solely from OO programming? It is enough to have a module or package mechanism.

  3. Re:Hmmm ... by IICV · · Score: 3, Informative

    Until recently, I never thought there was a functional difference between a lone line containing "i++;" "++i;". Of course, for variable assignment it matters, but what's going on under the covers? If you stop and think about it, i++ actually has to return the old value. ++i can destroy that old value and never needs to worry about returning the old value (you can avoid an extra copy).

    Isn't it great that we have optimizing compilers that'll take care of considerations like that for us?

    A.. code should be written for clarity first, and if it turns out that it's not quite fast enough only then should you start worrying about whetehr or not it should be i++ or ++i.