[PRL] The latest from Joel

[Felix S Klock II]

Matthias-

On Dec 30, 2005, at 3:22 PM, Matthias Felleisen wrote:

> Felix, Joel is right for the wrong reasons. You're wrong in some  
> details, too:

This post by Bill de hÓra says some things that I wish I had thought  
of (and some other things that are more questionable, with respect to  
the usefulness of OOP):

http://www.dehora.net/journal/2005/12/ 
difficult_v_hard_as_opposed_to_java_v_c.html

In particular, it points out that Java opens up new teaching avenues,  
such as multithreading or distributed programming.  You can do those  
things in C as well, but not without pulling in a lot of target  
system dependencies.

I'm not saying that we should be putting those topics into the 1st  
year curriculum.  But I think this supports my thesis: if you want to  
test the Java programmers, you should shift your interviewee testing  
strategy, rather than adopting the cop-out of "Java's too easy."

-Felix