5 ms·

I mean yeah, I agree, but is it that hard to keep relevant technology in the mix? I'm not saying everything has to be cutting edge!

alistairSH 7mo ago
Sure, but are C++ or Java really that outdated. AFAIK that’s what most schools teach. Maybe with some JavaScript as well. It’s not lime they’re teaching Fortran or COBOL. And with the advent of AI coding, I’d hope they can spend more time on system design, as that’s where I’ve found new grads are generally lacking.
- mindcrime 7mo ago
  > Sure, but are C++ or Java really that outdated. In what sense is either "outdated" at all?? Especially Java. Anybody who's paying attention to Java since about Java 11 would know that Java is very much a modern language at this point. I don't write much C++ myself these days so I haven't kept up with that as much, but my subjective perception is that C++ is also modernizing quickly over the last decade or so.
  - alistairSH 7mo ago
    That was my point! Unless I missed it, those are the two most common core languages at colleges, and they're both very much alive and in use.
- kmoser 7mo ago
  The irony is that if they taught COBOL today, those grads could likely get a good job working on legacy code.
  - badc0ffee 7mo ago
    I took a COBOL course during undergrad in 1998. Glad I was exposed to it, but I never did anything with it.
  - alistairSH 7mo ago
    Yeah, for sure there are some edge cases, and COBOL is a big one, since there's a LOT of banking/finance stuff built on it. FWIW, my employer just deprecated our legacy COBOL (1-2 modules out of many), replaced with Java. It took years to make that transition.
arw0n 7mo ago
Many professors view teaching as a secondary obligation. Even if they don't it takes more time to learn to teach something than just to learn it. Our field is moving so fast that outside of the major innovations, it would be quite difficult to keep up being a good teacher on everything, while also doing research, and doing the actual teaching. In addition, most new tech isn't very interesting, or useful. Like every couple of months I'm getting another peak at SOTA Python or JS and the "innovation" is just another layer of duct tape that doesn't really improve much. Cool tech usually also sees faster adoption in academia. Rust courses where offered at the uni I went to back in 2017 for example. According to my friends still involved with uni, there was also a strong shift towards more data science/engineering and HCD since then, both fields that saw major practical improvements.

alistairSH 7mo ago

Sure, but are C++ or Java really that outdated. AFAIK that’s what most schools teach. Maybe with some JavaScript as well. It’s not lime they’re teaching Fortran or COBOL. And with the advent of AI coding, I’d hope they can spend more time on system design, as that’s where I’ve found new grads are generally lacking.

mindcrime 7mo ago
> Sure, but are C++ or Java really that outdated. In what sense is either "outdated" at all?? Especially Java. Anybody who's paying attention to Java since about Java 11 would know that Java is very much a modern language at this point. I don't write much C++ myself these days so I haven't kept up with that as much, but my subjective perception is that C++ is also modernizing quickly over the last decade or so.
- alistairSH 7mo ago
  That was my point! Unless I missed it, those are the two most common core languages at colleges, and they're both very much alive and in use.
kmoser 7mo ago
The irony is that if they taught COBOL today, those grads could likely get a good job working on legacy code.
- badc0ffee 7mo ago
  I took a COBOL course during undergrad in 1998. Glad I was exposed to it, but I never did anything with it.
- alistairSH 7mo ago
  Yeah, for sure there are some edge cases, and COBOL is a big one, since there's a LOT of banking/finance stuff built on it. FWIW, my employer just deprecated our legacy COBOL (1-2 modules out of many), replaced with Java. It took years to make that transition.

arw0n 7mo ago

Many professors view teaching as a secondary obligation. Even if they don't it takes more time to learn to teach something than just to learn it. Our field is moving so fast that outside of the major innovations, it would be quite difficult to keep up being a good teacher on everything, while also doing research, and doing the actual teaching. In addition, most new tech isn't very interesting, or useful. Like every couple of months I'm getting another peak at SOTA Python or JS and the "innovation" is just another layer of duct tape that doesn't really improve much. Cool tech usually also sees faster adoption in academia. Rust courses where offered at the uni I went to back in 2017 for example. According to my friends still involved with uni, there was also a strong shift towards more data science/engineering and HCD since then, both fields that saw major practical improvements.