> >>> My high-school programming class was advertised as teaching people how > >>> to > >>> program in C and do all sorts of low-level stuff. I signed up thinking > >>> I might finally meet a "computer expert" that actually knew what they > >>> were talking about... > >>> > >>> The teacher began by forcing us all to make "hello world" applications > >>> IN JAVA!
I teach Computer Science at a small public university. There is a wide variety in the high school preparation of my students. Most of them wind up in Java classes similar to yours, which demotivates them and makes my life harder. Some of them have absolutely excellent classes. It depends a lot on whether the school district can afford to have dedicated computing/technology faculty. My general impression is that large, wealthy school districts are able to devote enough resources to provide I.T. classes, but most (smaller and poorer) school districts can't. That said, I agree completely with you about the importance of a "low-level" understanding of computer systems. You don't have to understand how an engine works to be a race-card driver, but it helps. And if you want to be in the pit crew, you'd better know the difference between a metric wrench and an imperial one. Knowledge of binary, especially, shows up in lots of applications other than "systems-level" coding -- graphics filters, subnet masks, digital signal processing, numerical analysis, bitsets for network flags, lots of places. _______________________________________________ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
