Computer Science Education

I had an email exchange recently with a fairly popular CTO and author. His position is the university computer science department should be a training ground for the current software trend. So the decision CS departments should be making now is dotNET or J2EE.

Of course I disagree. But I am more than apparently in the minority.  [Patrick Logan]

I’ll join that minority.  I sometimes say, only half joking, that the best training for a wannabe programmer is to go work on a construction site.  [Gordon Weakliem]

Hmm…that’s an interesting idea!  As far as the CS curriculum goes, however, I think every CS student should have to learn some flavor of assembly language, and should also have to learn C.  After that, sure, teach them J2EE or .NET or the next great thing; but if you don’t learn the lower level stuff, in my opinion, then you’re really never going to completely get it.