On Tue, 2003-08-26 at 22:57, Al Davis wrote: > On Tuesday 26 August 2003 04:35 am, Alex Malinovich wrote: --snip-- > You didn't say what your major is, so I am assuming it is CS. CIS actually. Not nearly as much theory as CS and a very solid grounding in business and management. About the most 'advanced' CS stuff covered in the program is big O complexity and constructing various data structures from scratch. (linked lists and the such) > It is worth studying many languages, including those that do not > seem to apply to your present interests. You are not expected > to like them all. Yes, but it's very easy to lose sight of that when the only thing standing between you and your degree are two COBOL classes. :) > COBOL should be studied for several reasons. First, it uses a > syntax that is more conversational than other languages. Also, > it is has been and still is of significant historical interest. > By learning it, and learning its style, you learn programming > techniques that you would probably not be exposed to otherwise. I have been absolutely amazed by how easy COBOL is to read. However, that also comes at the price of being incredibly wordy. Our first "Hello World" program is a little over two pages. > Windows, too, has its place. Too many CS schools use MS-Windows > exclusively. In my mind, this destroys their credibility. As > much as I like GNU, Linux, free software,.. I must admit that > an environment that is 100% GNU, Linux, free also is of limited > credibility. You see only one side. A truly good program will > use a mix of systems. I definitely agree with this. My school, unfortunately, is very Windows-centric. Linux is briefly mentioned in an operating systems course along with BSD, Unix, MacOS, DOS, and a whole bunch of others. All within the span of about 3 paragraphs. I have in 5 years met only one professor who has ever used Linux. There are only a few who have ever even heard of it. Though, to their credit, they are all serious, business-minded professionals. They might not be hackers in any sense, but they can do great things in business. -- Alex Malinovich Support Free Software, delete your Windows partition TODAY! Encrypted mail preferred. You can get my public key from any of the pgp.net keyservers. Key ID: A6D24837
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