UNIX/scripting/programming courses?

[Jeff Kinz]

On Tue, Oct 11, 2005 at 11:24:28AM -0400, Jerry Feldman wrote:
> 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". )B 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. 


Hi Jerry, 

I just want to add that I notice that Northeastern Night courses are now
full credit college courses. The two courses I took from them were not.
This was (Ahem), some years ago.... :-), and the C++ courses I took at
UMass Lowell was on the order of only 15 years ago... :-)

> The level of students in the C courses I taught were essentially students 
> who had no prior programming languages. 

Wow - no prior programming - Most would probably need a year? (2 
sequential one semester courses) to get a good grip on C.

(This is a byte, it has 8 bits.  A bit is ... )


> 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++. 

As a Chemistry major I started out with BASIC...  Its just like Java
without GOTOs.. ;-)  Almost ruined me completely, But then I took a lisp
course.  That redeemed my brain slightly.


> -- 
> Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
> Boston Linux and Unix user group
> http://www.blu.org PGP key id:C5061EA9
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-- 
speech recognition software was used in the composition of this e-mail
Jeff Kinz, Emergent Research, Hudson, MA.
¡Ya no mas!