[plug] Uni Course - UWA or Curtin?

[Greg Mildenhall]

On Sun, 18 Nov 2001, Frederic Valton wrote:
> From: "Greg Mildenhall" <assassin at live.wasp.net.au>
> > > Neither CS nor IT streams offer any industry experience, which at
> > > this late stage in my degree is something I regret.
> > Actually, a "practicum" (a minimum of 8 weeks' work experience in an 
> > software-related workplace) is now a mandatory part
> That said, the change won't effect this year's bunch of graduates, which
> is where I (we?) stand Greg.

Actually, I was speaking in the context of prospective future students,
since that's where this thread started.

Some of this years graduates do get the practicum, actually, but more will
in the future. I thought that it was an option for all third years this
year, but I guess not - it's a shame you missed out on it.

> I wasn't arguing that a sound theoretical background was undesirable, but that
> it would be preferable to be teach it within some relevant professional
> context - which other institutions seem to manage quite well.

I don't think there is much difference in this regard - the various
institutions tend to look at the same "contexts" (languages, platforms)
but differ in their balance of details vs abstractions.

> > > The main languages taught (outside of academic languages such
> > > as Prolog or Haskell)
> > Haskell is actually a general-purpose language, it is just not widely used
> > for reasons that escape me.
> Remember your words, and in ten years look back and ask yourself how much
> you've used it/forgotten... You could prove me wrong ;)

If in ten years time I am unable to program in a declarative functional
language, then I will probably switch careers rather than try to deal with
Java/C/whatever. If functional languages have not become a recognised part
of the programming mainstream by then, it will bode very poorly for us. :(

> > C++ is taught as a language, (as part of the second-year OOP unit) but
> > thankfully all later courses are now based on Java or C instead.
> C++ is skimmed over as a language as part of OOP. You couldn't possibly
> maintain that a student can program in it with that much exposure.

But no amount of study is going to do that. I am not convinced one can
learn a programming language as part of a course, you can only do it in a
serious long-term programming project, which basically means on-the-job.
(though an honours project might count) I certainly wouldn't take it as a
given that a graduate of _any_ programming course could program in
language x, nor would I presume that they couldn't.

You can teach people how to learn a language, though, and I would be
convinced that a CS graduate could learn one quicker and better than most.

> It's useful, and looks on a CV, as does C and Java.

My cat has C++ on her CV. She slept on my textbook once.

> What's more (for all you RTFM declaimers out there?), the manual is a
> darn sight thicker than Haskell's.

Ain't that the truth. That's why teaching the details of C++ is not an
efficient use of time in a computer science / software engineering course.

> And no, I do not believe that it is the role of a University to be so
> technologically focussed that it's graduates loose their skill set after
> a few years (there's TAFE for that), but this view has to balanced
> against furthering their employability,

Yep. I just don't think that any of our tertiary institutions are failing
their students on that count - I can't imagine that there would be a
high-paying, long-term job out there which only employs people from (say)
Murdoch because of a particular language taught in second year there.
I can see the less theoretically-grounded grads falling into their first
job very easily because of some vocational emphasis, but finding it
difficult to move across or up to another field or job at a later date,
should they want to, or should their original area dry up.

> particularly in an area which such strong industry ties, and there's
> plenty of scope to do both.

I think that's the point. None of the institutions are irresponsible
enough not to give a good mix of the two, but some students are
short-sighted enough to focus too much on technologies over science.

> Not everyone wants to enter research.

Thank God, I hope not. :)

-Greg