On Sun, Feb 01, 2004 at 01:27:57AM -0500, Aaron Lanterman wrote:
> 
> On Sat, 31 Jan 2004, David T. Lewis wrote:
> 
> > I would not be surprised if many CS students think of Squeak as a wierd
> > thing. I suspect that many of them are suffering from the misperception
> > that they are somehow going to make a living writing computer programs,
> > and are concerned that the "skills" they learn be "relevant" in the
> > commercial marketplace. I'm sure that they will be disabused of these
> > notions soon enough, but for your ECE students this may be less of
> 
> Alas, it's just as much of a concern among ECE students, if not more so.
> Indeed, much of the College of Engineering - not just at the student
> level, but at the faculty level - wound up revolting against CS1321, which
> is based on Scheme, the main complaint that people got out knowing
> recursion, but not knowing how to interpret a simple for loop. (I'd seen
> that several times in the ECE2025 class I teach, which uses MATLAB - our
> students are supposed to have had CS1322, which uses Java, but there was a
> weird loophole where biomed majors could get into 2025 with only having
> had 1321.)

I don't know if Georgia Institute of Technology even has a college of
liberal arts, but consider how the situation might look if "computer
science" could be taught in the school of liberal arts rather than
engineering.  Looking back at my two undergrads, one in a school of
liberal arts and the other in a school of engineering, I think that
learning Squeak in the school that taught anthopology, political science,
and music would have provided a very worthwhile educational experience.

Dave