UNIX/scripting/programming courses?

[gaf at blu.org (Jerry Feldman)]

On Tuesday 11 October 2005 10:20 am, Jeff Kinz wrote:
> I've tried both and over the years found that the rigor and completeness
> found only in the "real college" courses is immensely more valuable than
> the lightweight approach typified by what I experienced in "Northeast at
> night". ?Sorry if this offends anyone at/from Northeastern but I'm only
> talking about their Adult-night-time courses, not the real college work.
I would probably agree with you. 
BTW: Northeastern is on the quarter system for their night school. The day 
school transitioned to the semester system last year, but the night school 
elected to continue with the quarter system. C is taught as either 2 
1-quarter courses or 1 intensive 1 quarter course. While both have the same 
content, avoid the intensive course in that you get too much information 
thrown at you in too short of a time. 

BTW: I am not offended. One of the things I don't like about Northeastern is 
that each instructor is responsible for his/her own syllabus. I would much 
prefer a more standard syllabus. When I first taught as a substitute, I 
found that the students were not as far along as they should have been. 
None of the students knew what an expression was. 
The level of students in the C courses I taught were essentially students 
who had no prior programming languages. 

In a more ideal world, I prefer a programming student be taught the 
principles of programming possibly with another language. C and C++ are 
difficult first programming languages. Pascal is probably better but no one 
in their right mind would use Pascal any more :-)
Java might be a better first language today because it is both structured, 
Object Oriented, and does not have some of the vagaries of C or the 
complexity of C++. 
-- 
Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
Boston Linux and Unix user group
http://www.blu.org PGP key id:C5061EA9
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