TITLE: Advice on my Advice to a Prospective Web Developers
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: August 04, 2009  1:45 PM
DESC: 
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BODY:
Thanks to everyone who responded to my
<A HREF="http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2009-07.html#e2009-07-30T06_12_32.htm">
   call for advice</A>
on what advice I should give to a student interested
in studying at the university with a goal of becoming
a web developer.  People interpreted the article in
lots of different ways and so were able to offer
suggestions in many different ways.

In general, most confirmed the gist of my advice.
Learn a broad set of technical skills from the
spectrum of computer science, because that prepares
one to contribute to the biggest part of the web
space, or study design, because that's they part the
techies tend to do poorly.  A couple of readers
filled me in on the many different kinds of web
development programs being offered by community
colleges and technical institutes.  We at the
university could never compete in this market, at
least not as a university.

<A HREF="http://weblogs.uni.edu/holmesm/">
   Mike Holmes</A>
wrote a bit about the confusion people have about
computer science, with a tip of the hat to
<A HREF="http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/show/19406">
   Douglas Adams</A>.
This confusion does play a role in prospective
students' indecision about pursuing CS in college.
People go through phases where they think of the
computer as replacing an existing technology or
medium: calculator, typewriter and printing press,
sketchpad, stereo, television.  Most of us in
computer science seem to do one of two things:
latch onto the current craze, or stand aloof from
the latest trend and stick with theory.  The
former underestimates what computing can be and
do, while the latter is so general that we appear
not to care about what people want or need.  It
is tough to balance these forces.

In some twittering around my request,
<A HREF="http://twitter.com/wadearnold/statuses/2936652462">
   Wade Arnold tweeted</A>
about the technical side of the issue:

<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
@wallingf Learn Java for 4 years to really know one
language well. Then they will pick up php, ruby, or
python for domain specific speed
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

The claim is that by learning a single language
really well, a person really learns how to program.
After that, she can learn other languages and fill in
the gaps, both language-wise and domain-wise.  This
advice runs counter to what many, many people say,
myself included: students should learn lots of
different languages and programming styles in order
to <EM>really</EM> learn how to program.  I think
Wade agrees with that over the long term of a
programmer's career.  What's unusual in his advice
is the idea that a student could or should spend
all four years of undergrad study mastering one
language before branching out.

A lot of CS profs will dismiss this idea out of
hand; indeed, one of the constant complaints one
hears in certain CS ed circles is that too many
schools have "gone Java" to the exclusion of all
other languages and to the lasting detriment of
their students.  My department's curriculum
has, since before I arrived, required students to
study a single language for their entire first
year, in an effort to help students learn one
language well enough that they learn how to
program before moving on to new languages and
styles.  When that language was, say, Pascal,
students could pretty well learn the whole language
and get a lot of practice using it.  C is simple
enough for that purpose, I suppose, but C++, Ada,
and Java aren't.  If we want students to master
those languages at a comparable level, we might
well need four years.  I think that says more
about the languages we use than about students
learning enough programming in a year to be
ready to generalize and fill in gaps with new
languages and styles.

This entry has gotten longer than I expected,
yet I have more to say.  I'll write more in
the days to come.
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