Acceptance of OpenOffice.org

[Paul Lussier]

"Tom Buskey" <tom at buskey.name> writes:

> On 3/14/06, Kevin D. Clark <kclark at mtghouse.com> wrote:
>
>> I'll leave it to others to opine which language is best to start with.
>> There seem to be lots of opinions.  But, one thing that I find to be
>> really weird are CS programs that start with Java but never teach C!
>> Ever!  I have a good friend who went through a program like this.  He
>> is very very smart, but he doesn't know a lot about C.  I find this to
>> be very...weird.  Then again, he knows a more about Java than I do.
>
> Well, there was a time when *everyone* learned BASIC.  Then the CS/Math guys
> learned Pascal.  Engineers learned Fortran.  Business learned Cobol.
>
> Further on for CS was a language class that taught lisp/scheme, snobol, C,
> and some other language I can't remember.
>
> Some would find a CS program that started with C and never taught Pascal to
> be odd.

My understanding[1] is that MIT doesn't "teach" computer languages.
Their intro CS class teaches about computers and computation using
Scheme.  You end up learning Scheme as a by-product of taking that
class, but the end-goal of the course is not to teach the language.
After that, you are expected to "just know" the various languages
required for different course, and many don't dictate what languages
any given project is written in, it's up to the student.

[1]  Which may well be inaccurate, flawed, or just plain wrong :)
-- 

Seeya,
Paul