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From: Rich <rich@example.invalid>
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy
Date: Wed, 26 Feb 2025 22:34:52 -0000 (UTC)
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Scott Dorsey <kludge@panix.com> wrote:
> Scott Dorsey <kludge@panix.com> wrote:
>>
>>We also have a bunch of IT programs which are really business school 
>>programs with some computing added.  I think those are pretty much 
>>worthless, but they get a lot of students.
> 
> Oh, and I will say that most of the students that I deal with 
> personally are not CS students at all but engineering students.  They 
> get one programming class, usually in Matlab, and no basic computer 
> literacy stuff at all.

Just one programming class..... in Matlab???  For Engineering.  Ugh.

I had (if memory serves) at least one Pascal class, one Fortran class, 
and an assembler (CDC Cyber 7000 - a really weird CPU on the inside) 
class, all required classes for Engineering.  Pascal class was trivial 
(had already done plenty of UCSD Pascal on Apple II in high-school) so 
just had to adjust to the small difference in the CDC Cyber Pascal we 
were using.  Fortran was similarly trivial, but oh did I come to hate 
Fortran in the end.  Just had to learn the "fortranisms", as I already 
understood the over-arching "how to program" aspects.  The assembler 
class was also itself trivial (had done loads of 6502 assembler by this 
point, and some 8086 assembler, provided one considered DOS's debug an 
'assembler' of sorts).  Just had to "learn the language" rather than 
the "how to program" part.

But, /just/ matlab.  That is so wrong on so many levels.