Comments on: Perils of poor Computer Science Education — Part II http://rwandering.net/2006/01/24/perils2/ The blogged wandering of Robert W. Anderson Mon, 20 Jun 2011 16:33:27 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 By: Dan Ciruli http://rwandering.net/2006/01/24/perils2/comment-page-1/#comment-3129 Dan Ciruli Wed, 25 Jan 2006 06:12:37 +0000 http://rwandering.net/?p=111#comment-3129 I've enjoyed watching the threads about Scheme. When I took CS 60A at Berkeley, it was Lisp/Scheme. At the time, I had taken classes in BASIC, Fortran, and COBOL. Scheme opened my eyes to a whole new world of development--the recursion, the functions, everything about it. It was amazing, and it really convinced me to become a computer science major. I never thought about the fact that it was a way of levelling the playing field--I bet you're right. If they had chosen any other language, some of us would have had an advantage. But no one had been exposed to Scheme before, so it was a better test of how we could grasp new concepts. I agree that the language isn't the thing. There is certainly something to be said for being an expert in a language or a technology, but I think that the general problem solving, planning, and development that we learned in computer science are what makes us good developers today. I’ve enjoyed watching the threads about Scheme. When I took CS 60A at Berkeley, it was Lisp/Scheme. At the time, I had taken classes in BASIC, Fortran, and COBOL. Scheme opened my eyes to a whole new world of development–the recursion, the functions, everything about it. It was amazing, and it really convinced me to become a computer science major.

I never thought about the fact that it was a way of levelling the playing field–I bet you’re right. If they had chosen any other language, some of us would have had an advantage. But no one had been exposed to Scheme before, so it was a better test of how we could grasp new concepts.

I agree that the language isn’t the thing. There is certainly something to be said for being an expert in a language or a technology, but I think that the general problem solving, planning, and development that we learned in computer science are what makes us good developers today.

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