Journal Com2Kid's Journal: Stupid Useless UW Computer Science Degree 9
The University of Washington's degree in Computer Science is now about 90% Java.
Let me repeat that
THEY TEACH EVERYTHING IN J-A-V-A.
If you are an employer, and you are interviewing an employee, how would you feel about that employee if this happened in the conversation:
Interviewer: So, you have a Computer Science degree from the University of Washington, a rather nice school a hear, known around the world for their cutting edge medical and biotech programs. Exactly how thorough was your curriculum there at the UW?
Potential Employee: Well, I spent two years on Java with a quarter or two or C thrown in there.
Interviewer: (dumb founded) well, uh, thanks for the application, err, what sort of experience do you have in end user design?
Potential Employee: Umm, did you miss the part about them only teaching Java?
Note to self: At least in Computer Engineering they make you take ASM (actually it is a prereq for the CS people to, heh, no idea how they are going to go from Java to ASM though, ^_^ )
Could be worse (Score:3, Interesting)
I did have the option of learning COBOL or FORTRAN during the second year, but passed. Did I miss a trick there, I wonder? Probably not, since I wouldn't have the same level of knowledge as the old-timers who were making good money during the Millenium Bug scare.
Umm... not that bad (Score:2)
Secondly, I know people that learned 4 years of C++ and don't know OO concepts as well as people with 1 year of Java.
The only disadvantage to only knowing java (probaby) is not knowing what is going on in the backend (like pointers and references, etc...), but if you had some good teachers, you'll probably do ok.
My degree was mostly C++, but Java was what really taught me good OO techniques.
Why the problem with UI? (Score:2)
Java encourages good coding practices and reusable OOP design. What's wrong with that?
UI design should not be platform/language specific anyway. At the company I used to work at, UI issues were handled by graphic
Its been said before, but I'll say it again (Score:3, Insightful)
That is why a good C.S. program will stress things like commenting, white space, variable naming, etc. just as much as working code. I've been a grader for intro level C.S. classes before and failure to comment was an immediate 25 point deduction (out of 100) before we even tried to compile your code...
I would hope by teaching the majority of the ciriculum in one language they are able to go into greater depth on the concepts. If you have a new language every class then you may never get to really delve into complex topics.
Re:Its been said before, but I'll say it again (Score:2)
And, your answer to 'what was the ciriculm like?' Doesn't require a "learned java" response, but a "learned advanced datastructures, object oriented design, advanced unix network programming, etc..."
One Last Thing (Score:2)
Don't say java doesn't pay
the language doesn't matter (Score:2)
UNM was one of the last major universities to switch from C++ to Java. Don't worry, practically every accredited uni in the U.S. is using Java to teach the main programming courses, so you aren't missing anything by going to UW.
One of the profs at my school told me C++ was a disaster for teaching CS. Students simply spend way too much time learning to be a language jockey rather than learning the concepts of CS. This is a major reason that all the unis switched to
end user design (Score:2)
You can design your own end user(s)? That would certainly make things much easier.
academic standard (Score:1)