In the early 2000's, I entered a university at the EXACT trough between the Dotcom Crash and the Web 2.0 Moment. In fact, I transferred from a lower-tier uni to a top-tier CS uni. At the time, they had still retained their "weed out" approach to intro CS (in Lisp) from the late 90's, hoping to keep kids from taking CS while thinking "I'll make a website and money will rain from the skies!"
My new uni completely rejected my previous uni's Intro CS curriculum. They forced me to retake their version: A Lisp-then-Java cycle that was a theoretical whiplash, which initially I resented. Who wants to re-take a class for topics they "already" learned?
By my second year, I saw the light. I understood the approach.
While my highschool friends at other unis had courses to learn {{topic}} and separate courses to learn {{language}}, the uni I was at had a policy of "languages are incidental" for most courses. Professors had a list of the languages that they would accept for projects. "Anything but Perl" was common, although "systems" courses required C. For every class with a required language, it was not taught during class. There would be an optional lab that you could attend to learn at least one of the languages allowed for the course. The expectation was that you could learn enough in two or three weeks before the first project kicked off, and the TAs really were there to help you figure it out (most courses had 20-30 students for 2-3 TAs).
The "bookend" intro courses that taught extreme FP and extreme OOP served as a forcing function that made me realize "Oh, languages really don't matter. Just pick up the details for the paradigm, and get on with the work."
As much as I resented having to "redo" an intro course cycle at first, I am forever grateful for the fearlessness that the overall experienced instilled in me.
My new uni completely rejected my previous uni's Intro CS curriculum. They forced me to retake their version: A Lisp-then-Java cycle that was a theoretical whiplash, which initially I resented. Who wants to re-take a class for topics they "already" learned?
By my second year, I saw the light. I understood the approach.
While my highschool friends at other unis had courses to learn {{topic}} and separate courses to learn {{language}}, the uni I was at had a policy of "languages are incidental" for most courses. Professors had a list of the languages that they would accept for projects. "Anything but Perl" was common, although "systems" courses required C. For every class with a required language, it was not taught during class. There would be an optional lab that you could attend to learn at least one of the languages allowed for the course. The expectation was that you could learn enough in two or three weeks before the first project kicked off, and the TAs really were there to help you figure it out (most courses had 20-30 students for 2-3 TAs).
The "bookend" intro courses that taught extreme FP and extreme OOP served as a forcing function that made me realize "Oh, languages really don't matter. Just pick up the details for the paradigm, and get on with the work."
As much as I resented having to "redo" an intro course cycle at first, I am forever grateful for the fearlessness that the overall experienced instilled in me.