[Gllug] VACANCY: Junior Systems Support

[general_email at technicalbloke.com]

Stephen Nelson-Smith wrote:
> Hi,
>   
>>> Instead they should try to impart the fundamentals of the discipline,
>>> things that are needed *no matter what language you are using*, and
>>> introduce you to a lot of varied languages so you get used to the
>>> variety and to learning new ones.
>>>       
>> I thought the reason that they taught Java was that it's the simplest
>> language with which to teach object-oriented programming.
>>     
>
> Not quite sure I'd choose Java for that.  Smalltalk maybe, but not Java.
>
> S.
>   

It's really not the simplest, it's painfully verbose and relatively
simple things always seem to end up using reams of ugly boilerpate code.
They'll be teaching it because...

1) For several years it's been one of the worlds most widely used (I
won't say popular!) computer languages
2) It runs happily on a variety *nix workstations which most Uni's use,
and also on everyone's home machines
3) It doesn't cost anything, unlike Visual Studio

They taught us Smalltalk at Uni, I always thought they should have been
teaching us C++ (these were the days before pleasant dynamic languages
like Python!) There has been, and will remain a lot of demand for Java
though as so much business crap is written in it so I don't think it's
unreasonable to teach it. Exposure to Java will at least make students
semi-employable and it will definitely help them appreciate the beauty
of almost any other language they get to use! :)


Roger.
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