The Core

"Children are being forced to learn how to use applications, rather than to make them. They are becoming slaves to the user interface and are totally bored by it," he said.

True that.  I remember back in college a thousand years ago, I had to take a computer class as part of the curriculum.  It was boring as hell as I already knew all the programs they were trying to teach.  So, I went to class and read a book. 

I actually learned to love that class as it was the only time during the week I could sit and read.

So when I was in college (University of Vermont, starting in 1981), there were no applications courses, but you could get credit for learning a programming language.


Then I sat in some computer science classes in Berkeley around 1998, and found out that at Berkeley, CS majors can't even get credit for programming language classes. They specifically say they expect that anyone coming to study computer science in their program should be the kind of person who can teach herself syntax and they don't waste time on teaching languages that may go out of style. They teach core concepts that you can use no matter what language comes into fashion.

First semester CS is taught in Scheme and hardly one second is taught teaching the language itself. You're expected to figure it out as you go along.

It left me with great admiration for Berkeley and contempt for *universities* who offer college credit for courses on using applications.