John Mitchell wrote:
<rant>
I would wholeheartedly agree with this, but I believe its worse than
teaching process is one of learning to program like a monkey, monkey see monkey do. People are no longer taught to think for themselves, but instead taught to program in a specific language (PHP, Java, rarely C or C++ any more, C#, or VB) and that is all they know. I don't believe this is a failing with the lecturers but with the fundamental change in attitudes to programming.
The story of Mel comes to mind (one of my favourite): http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/story-of-mel.html http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/R/Real-Programmer.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainfuck ) since this gives people a chance to show they can program rather than being able to tell me "I know PHP" or "I know C", suprisingly very few newer programmers can
I think someone being able to quickly understand brainfuck and write usable code in it may be smart, but I don't think it's necessarily a sure sign of a potentially productive employee that "fits well in the team". Greetings, Jeroen -- Earthquake Magnitude: 3.5 Date: Tuesday, February 28, 2012 20:15:32 UTC Location: Channel Islands region, California Latitude: 33.9042; Longitude: -119.4195 Depth: 8.60 km