Re: Testing job applicants

[cmadams@fly.hiwaay.net (Chris Adams)]

Once upon a time, Pete Fenelon  <pete@fenelon.com> said:
>In alt.folklore.computers Mike Swaim <swaim@gemini.c-com.net> wrote:
>>   It's easier and faster to teach a good programmer a new language than to
>> teach someone who knows a language to be a good programmer.
>
>Agreed 200%. There's far too much emphasis in introductory courses on 
>language syntax and specifics. Ideally, whoever teaches CS101 or
>its equivalent should just teach algorithms and data structures; the
>mechanical details of programming are something anyone with enough
>talent can pick up given time.  Drilling it into heads that prefer to
>soak it up at their own rate is one of the best ways to alienate bright,
>enthusiastic novices. You also get generations of programmers who regard
>whatever language they were taught as "the only one for the problem" -- 
>a problem if you grew up (as I did) in the Pascal era and could see that C and
>C++ were more elegant, useful and practical :) 

My introductory class at Georgia Tech was taught using "pseudo-code":
strictly on paper.  We used a sort-of Pascal/C/instructor's own creation
language.

The second quarter class was taught with Pascal and Lisp.

When I was at UAH (Alabama/Huntsville), one of the senior level classes
was a survey of programming languages, from C and Pascal to APL, Lisp,
and Smalltalk (among others).  We only had to problems to solve for
programming assignments, but we had to solve them in four different
languages (and not just Pascal, C, C++ - you had to use languages from
different "groups" that were all conceptually different).

After that, when I wanted to learn a new language, I've just picked up
a reference book to get going.  With some languages (like perl), I'll
eventually buy another book or read more documentation to learn the
finer details of the language.

Now I know more obscure languages than anyone I know (although I'm sure
I've got a long way to go to catch up with people on these groups :-) ).
For example, who needs a word-processor?  That's what Postscript is for!
-- 
Chris Adams <cmadams@hiwaay.net>
Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Information Services
I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble.