"Don" <nospam@nospam.com> wrote in message news:hhgho0$2e8o$1@digitalmars.com...
>
> It is different elsewhere.
> In Australia, all universities are public, except one private university
> which is named after Australia's most notorious corporate criminal. Really
> bizarre - it's kind of like getting an Aviation degree from Bin Laden
> Flying School.

Heh, crazy :)

> I'm not sure that I would have gone to university if I'd lived in the US, and I'm certain my wife could not have -- it seems like you need rich parents. Our tertiary education was virtually free.

In the US you can go afford college easily if you're either really rich *or* if you're in poverty (or if you're a non-caucasian woman). If you're in poverty you get everything paid for via all the scholarships and grants that are out there (which is great). You also get pretty much a free ride on grants and sholarships if you're a woman or a non-caucasian and doubly-so if you pursue math or CS (not so great if you beleive in the "equality" that most US citizens *claim* to value, even though most don't *truly* value it as they wouldn't know true equality if it, ahem...well, you probably know where I'm going with that). But if you're white or male (especially a white male) and you're middle-class (especially lower-middle class), then you're pretty much screwed. I made the mistake of going and it left me US$100,000 in debt. Stupidest thing I ever did by far.

>
> Australian universities get their money by having astronomical fees for overseas (Asian) students. There's a lot of pressure on academic staff to get them to graduate, no matter how poorly they perform.

Yea, see, doesn't matter where you go, schooling is an absolute joke.

"Walter Bright" <newshound1@digitalmars.com> wrote in message news:hhgv3b$7cq$1@digitalmars.com...
> Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>> "Sean Kelly" <sean@invisibleduck.org> wrote in message news:hhetss$26er$1@digitalmars.com...
>>> Intro courses in the sciences are often intended to weed out the people
>>
>> There's a *lot* of things wrong with the way schools work. Deliberate "weeding out" is a clear red flag that a school cares more about their own statistics (graduation ratio, etc) than actual education:
>
> That may be true for some schools. But there are incoming students who simply don't belong, for a variety of reasons. I don't think it serves those students to string them along with both the school and the student pretending they can hack the material.
>
> Have you ever watched the tryouts on the TV show "So You Think You Can Dance"? They have some applicants who clearly just don't belong there. They are often asked if they've had training, and they'll say they've had 5 years of dance training. They cry when told by the judges that they have no talent.
>
> Apparently, none of their instructors told them this, they just continued to take the tuition money and compliment the student on how well he's doing.
>
> It's like me going to basketball camp. I will never, ever be a good basketball player, no matter how hard I try or how much coaching I get. It will never happen. For a coach not to tell me this is doing me a grave disservice, because I should be expending effort at something I can succeed at.
>
> Of course, if I then choose to take basketball anyway because I just love the game, that's fine, too. But it would be unreasonable of me to expect a top coach to be willing to coach me, even if I paid him $$$. He'll want to be coaching people who can succeed at basketball.

See that's the thing, there's that middle-ground of sensibility right there that schools just won't go near. If they want to have a chat with someone about whether they think they're really on the right path, great. All problems solved. But instead they just play these bullshit games behind the students backs.

"Nick Sabalausky" <a@a.a> wrote in message news:hhhfd4$12tk$1@digitalmars.com...
> "Don" <nospam@nospam.com> wrote in message news:hhgho0$2e8o$1@digitalmars.com...
>>
>> Australian universities get their money by having astronomical fees for overseas (Asian) students. There's a lot of pressure on academic staff to get them to graduate, no matter how poorly they perform.
>
> Yea, see, doesn't matter where you go, schooling is an absolute joke.
>

And the worst thing is, these so-called "educators" game their own students as much as they can possibly get away with (which is a hell of a lot, given that schools are such sacred cows), and then raise hell for any student that tries to watch his own back (which I know from personal experience, many times over). Nothing but a bunch of goddamn crooks.

On 2009-12-28 12:53:28 +0100, retard <re@tard.com.invalid> said:
> I'm not saying that everyone should learn Haskell, but I know it's
> possible to learn stuff like Curry-Howard isomorphism, hylomorphisms,
> monads, monad transformers, comonads, and analysing amortized costs of
> algorithms at that age. It's just dumb to assume that young people can't
> learn something as complex as static types!

With respect to education: I think that exposing different programming paradigms to students has a lot of merit. Each paradigm has different structuring of data and execution, and is taylored to different problems. Pick a language for each paradigm that is as simple as possible, but still powerful enough to solve practical problems. This will avoid students to be overwhelmed by the multitude of possible construction combinations. E.g. a plausible language selection with varying typing disciplines would be:

- Haskell or ML (functional programming, static typing)
- Prolog (declarative/logics programming)
- Python or maybe Ruby (object-oriented programming, dynamic typing)

While D2 is nice for people who want great performance without many of the downsides of C++, I do not think it makes a good first language for education. Various stumbling blocks I see include asymmetry of struct/class, immutable (which tends to creep in everywhere, and can be cast away with undefined behavior), static vs. dynamic arrays, use of multiple paradigms (structured, OO, functional), and not so strong typing. Besides availability of books, tools, and libraries of course.

Of course, some of the practical problems may be solved in short term, if Andrei's book sparks more interest from the wider programming community.

-- Daniel

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 18:46:54 +0100, Daniel de Kok wrote:

> On 2009-12-28 12:53:28 +0100, retard <re@tard.com.invalid> said:
>> I'm not saying that everyone should learn Haskell, but I know it's possible to learn stuff like Curry-Howard isomorphism, hylomorphisms, monads, monad transformers, comonads, and analysing amortized costs of algorithms at that age. It's just dumb to assume that young people can't learn something as complex as static types!
> 
> With respect to education: I think that exposing different programming paradigms to students has a lot of merit. Each paradigm has different structuring of data and execution, and is taylored to different problems. Pick a language for each paradigm that is as simple as possible, but still powerful enough to solve practical problems. This will avoid students to be overwhelmed by the multitude of possible construction combinations. E.g. a plausible language selection with varying typing disciplines would be:
> 
> - Haskell or ML (functional programming, static typing) - Prolog
> (declarative/logics programming) - Python or maybe Ruby (object-oriented
> programming, dynamic typing)

Another possibility is to use an educational multiparadigm language such as the Mozart/Oz system. I think it's much more a multiparadigm language than e.g. D or C++. OTOH I'm not so sure whether it's good enough for all practical applications.