[sdousley]

Originally Posted by techieMoe

I don't want to sound too harsh here, but tough, get over it. It's impossible for any school to offer fully-realized curriculum in the full myriad of languages that exist out there today.

Oh, i'm not that bothered by it. I was just stating that that's why i dislike java myself! I completely agree that a educational facility cannot account for many languages. It's just the lecturers they get. If they get a lot of C/C++ lecturers, that will be the main language they use, if they get predominantly PHP programmers, that will be what they use! It's what's available, i fully accept that. I'd much rather get taught something i dont really like or am likely not to use properly than something that i probably will use improperly!

techieMoe]Nothing is stopping you from learning C, C++, Perl, PHP, or Ruby on your own.

and this is exactly what i did. I started using PHP, then in my 2nd year, a project came up that required it, and that taught me a bit more, and i have progressed since then myself on personal learning.

[tech291083]

Thanks a lot guys for your thoughts on the subject. Appreciated.

[Tim_Wright]

Originally Posted by tech291083

Hi,

I have been hearing a lot from an IT student friend of mine about the increasing hatred towards programming of any kind taught at the university and efforts to look for something else in the IT field itself as a career option. Can any one who is experienced enough tell me as why this is a shocking reality? Why universities are failing to encourage students to become professional programmers? If an IT student is not interested in being a programmer what else are the options? What is the most preferred option of all in terms of what you have seen in your professional career? Thanks.

Hi, Im currently a student doing IT and I could tell you why everyone hates even the slightest bit of code in my school in the UK. Its mainly because they have a mindset that code is for nerds and our teacher (who doesn't know the web address to log into gmail) scares them off by saying that SQL is a very complicated languague that takes many many many years to even become slightly good at.

Hope that helps lol!

Tim

[likwid]

Code is for nerds. So is most of IT, I think people who take this up that aren't 'geeks' or 'nerds' don't do too well.

[sdousley]

Originally Posted by Tim_Wright

...saying that SQL is a very complicated languague

Well, SQL certainly can be very complicated. But to be good at it doesn't take too long. I self-taught myself left joins (with the help of my dad) in a few hours!

[d38dm8nw81k1ng]

i know that in the UK, applications for CS were down, massively. i think that it's partially because not enough people are any good at programming. out of our class of 10-15 pupils in computing (college, not uni). there are two of us who are naturally good at it. our only problem is being forced to code our project in VB6 instead of a half-decent language. i suppose one reason for people not wanting to do programming is that _some_ lecturers are idiots. i was at teeside university a couple of weeks back and the lecturers quickly put me off going there for a CS course.

[Dark_Stang]

The first day of my C++ class in high school the teacher said, "This class will only be half this size by the end of the year." And he was right. I think there are a lot of people coming from web design backgrounds and think programming will be similar. And, I've seen a lot of people have a very difficult time understanding Object Oriented Programming.

But really... I can't see myself doing anything else. I love programming.

[sdousley]

Originally Posted by d38dm8nw81k1ng

I suppose one reason for people not wanting to do programming is that _some_ lecturers are idiots. i was at teeside university a couple of weeks back and the lecturers quickly put me off going there for a CS course.

similar reason to why i decided not to go to a company for IT Training after uni. They had me sit in on one lecture for 10-15 mins to listen in. They were talking about converting Hex->dec at the time. The lecturer got a question wrong if i remembered at the time correctly. She was asked "If you have 13 bits, where do u split them, left to right eg: xxxx xxxx xxxx x or right to left eg: x xxxx xxxx xxxx. she said left to right. I thought ... that's not right. That would give u 2 completely different answers... i am right in thinking she was wrong aren't i??

[techieMoe]

Originally Posted by d38dm8nw81k1ng

i suppose one reason for people not wanting to do programming is that _some_ lecturers are idiots.

Sadly, that was true at my university as well. The best lecturer I had wasn't even a CS major himself. He taught programming but his degree was in teaching high school Biology. On the other side of the spectrum, one of the worst lecturers I had was a multiple doctorate with tenure. Go figure.

If I hadn't really known that programming was my calling (since I was about 9 years old) I might have gotten discouraged. Bad professors are certainly a problem, but I imagine that's true for any discipline.

[carlosponti]

there was a professor where i received my associates from that had a degree in physical education and was head of the programming emphasis degree program. her classes were horrible. she was a buzzword happy person. my favorite professor was a 40 something year veteran retired from FAA. he was in his 70's and grouchy but i just loved his classes. they both clashed so bad too.

aside from his classes i didnt get many good professors. it went back to the adage that those who cant do teach and those who cant teach can do.