free variable

In the interest of full disclosure, I should admit that, pace the screed portion of my previous post, I occasionally harbor utopian dreams myself. (Hey, those lyrics beat Lennon’s with a stick — and present a much more desirable “ideal world!”)

Choosing a didactic programming language is one area in which the academy should be less “realistic” and more “out of touch” with the “real world,” I think. As Alan Kay put it recently:

…I fear—as far as I can tell—that most undergraduate degrees in computer science these days are basically Java vocational training. I’ve heard complaints from even mighty Stanford University with its illustrious faculty that basically the undergraduate computer science program is little more than Java certification.