Squeak in college education

John Pfersich jp1660 at att.net
Wed Feb 18 02:07:56 UTC 2004


And a mind expanding  curriculum has a better chance of being 
developed at a small liberal arts college than at a technical 
university. At technical universities, a large number of the 
professors are teaching outdated software engineering practices, for 
example. I got so sick of retraining  newbies that I've turned to 
consulting.

>Well, a start would be to get the students to understand the 
>differences that should exist between "Computer Science", "Software 
>Engineering", and "Commercial Hacking".
>
>At Stanford, for example, a distressingly large part of the 
>undergraduate experience is really learning how to hack commercially 
>in JAVA. It's hard to find the other two disciplines even lurking 
>behind the vocational certification that is going on.
>
>Another point about this is that for most of the existence of 
>universities, they have been institutions that have perspectives 
>about knowledge that students want to acquire. One of the biggest 
>implications in the old meaning of education is that you don't come 
>out of as you went in, plus some "knowledge in a knapsack" but that 
>you come out of it as a different person with a qualitatively 
>different set of perspectives. Over the last 50 years, and 
>especially with the baby boom, universities have increasingly turned 
>themselves into market-driven businesses and vocational trainers.
>
>So the big questions about GaTech and other major universities have 
>to do with the existence of reasonable boundaries around parts of 
>computing knowledge, pursuits and skills, and does the university 
>have a theory about knowledge and learning that it is trying use to 
>transform students (is it worrying about retention or quality)?
>
>Cheers,
>
>Alan
>
>-------
>
>
>At 1:31 AM -0500 2/17/04, Aaron Lanterman wrote:
>>Part of the Georgia Tech culture is that people like to complain. (This is
>>true for the faculty as much as the students.) Anyway, having a good sense
>>of humor about these things, I was peeking at
>>http://www.studentsreview.com/GA/GT_c.html and ran across this quote:
>>
>>'Before I came I heard the school was good for Computer Science -- it is
>>afterall the biggest single major at the school. However, this is not a
>>Computer Science school, and they teach you useless languages such as
>>"Squeak", which you'll never use again in your life.'
>>
>>[Aside to Mark Guzdial: If hoping you have a good sense of humor about
>>this... :) ]
>>
>>This got me thinking... what would it take to convince college students
>>that Squeak is as cool as we think it is? Make them understand that C++ is
>>not the bees knees?
>>
>>- Aaron
>>
>>-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>Dr. Aaron Lanterman, Asst. Prof.       Voice:  404-385-2548
>>School of Electrical and Comp. Eng.    Fax:    404-894-8363
>>Georgia Institute of Technology        E-mail: lanterma at ece.gatech.edu
>>Mail Code 0250                         Web:    users.ece.gatech.edu/~lanterma
>>Atlanta, GA 30332                      Office: GCATT 334B
>
>
>--




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