[LINK] Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?

[Danny Yee]

> http://www.stsc.hill.af.mil/CrossTalk/2008/01/0801DewarSchonberg.html

This is just some Ada people pushing Ada.

I consider the choice of programming language to be pretty much
irrelevant at a fundamental level.  That is, there are many reasons
why one or another language might make more sense in teaching, but
they're more peripheral.  (For example, given that many students
in introductory CS courses are biologists or physicists who will do
no further programming courses, it makes sense to choose a language
that's easy for them to write simple programs in later.)

The issues with computer science courses that I see are:
1) a focus on specific technologies rather than underlying ideas, for
   example teaching TCP/IP specific material rather than more general
   ideas about networking (or, worse, teaching specific applications,
   resulting in "web design" graduates who know how to use Dreamweaver 
   but nothing else).
2) avoiding anything that has any mathematics - resulting in students
   who don't understand even the idea of a formal algorithm, let
   alone proofs of correctness or complexity analyses

But I don't think "computer science" is actually a coherent discipline
in any real sense.

Danny.
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