Re: Introductory
I'd be concerned if it wasn't for my own computing degree.
At the time, Java was still quite "new" but it was the course language.
As part of the three year degree I had to do a programming course that covered the whole three years.
It literally started at Hello World (fair enough), but at that point I realised that I could do it all without having to be in the lecture at all.
I skipped three years of programming courses by the simple precept of downloading the coursework from the FTP server, knocking something up on the train on the way in, making sure it compiled and run (pretty much, always did once you take account of the missing semicolon or whatever - and I was the only person I knew who logged the dual-boot machines into Linux and ran it in there, the number of people who wrote programs that only worked on one OS was amazing, given it was Java), and then emailing it in.
I don't think once that I struggled to do what was asked, with zero reference to the course material. There was nothing fantastically difficult there, that wasn't covered in literally the only reference material I had - a copy of the O'Reilly book for Java, complete with 1/3rd of the book being nothing but a class / function reference (which is why I bought it, really).
As such, what language you choose to do THAT kind of stuff in, it really doesn't matter.
I still remember sitting in the IT labs as a 1st year, and being consulted by the master students on why their Java minimax implementation for a game of draughts wasn't working. I literally debugged it with one glance, it was that obvious from the code.
I'm not anywhere near an expert programmer, but it was quite worrying that Masters and 3rd year pure-computing students were struggling with that stuff.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
