> It rings true to me, at least in CS and especially software engineering. In mathematics, physics and "real engineering" departments I haven't seen it at all,

> It rings true to me, at least in CS and especially software engineering. In mathematics, physics and "real engineering" departments I haven't seen it at all, though, and my experience may date me. Ah - yes. My friends at uni doing physics said they had to learn C++ - but only enough to write simple C-style programs and using simple classes without going into OOP design, design patterns, and large-scale concerns (I guess because they were all using some physics tool, and I understand it's good for interfacing with Fortran too). My friends doing EE (excluding those doing embedded work) said they all had to do Matlab, some friends doing mathematics reported the same. EE people also said they did some C too.