I read an article in one of the popular site, The Register on Exam board deletes C and PHP from CompSci A-levels
The article states that the Exam Board ( Schools teaching the Assessment and Qualifications Alliance ) will withdraw C# ,C and PHP from the syllabus of A-level computer science programme following the low intake of the above programming languages .
The article goes on stating that the board favors the approved languages like Java , Delphi , Python , Python , Visual Basic 6 , VB.NET but has warned that many universities were dropping java .
Here are some of my views/comments on the same .
The decisions seems to be unimpressive as C# , PHP are the languages that are in tremendous demand in the Market today .
When VB.NET is preferred , why not C# ??? .C# is one of the easiest to learn and the fastest growing language too.
All that matters here is the relevance to the opportunities that the students have immediately after the graduation and feel C# and Java has that advantage over the other languages specified .
Want to find which technology is more sought , Delphi , .NET , Java , Python etc ??? , search the Job portal , you might find the answer . 🙂
I am not a great fan of Delphi , But Delphi is a really a great language to learn , and i am quite happy that i am still working on Delphi along with .NET and that gives me a greater idea on the strengths of both the platforms .
I still remember few of my friends asking me what is Delphi 🙁 and have ended up with the argument that it is quite not as popular as C# or Java .
But the question arrives on why a particular language should be recommended for the university education rather than sticking to the basic concepts and focussing on Problem solving etc .
2 Comments
University and school education generally focuses on the concepts and underlying principles of Programming. Generally one or two languages are included in the syllabus in order to make the students understand the concepts wrt practical application. As you have mentioned each language has got its own charisma. The more you work on it the more you start aligning with it. Delphi is certainly a robust language. But in terms of number of users, I feel .Net, PHP and Java out beat Delphi.
As far as concepts are concerned, you are right that students should learn language from problem solving point of view.
But as students go along their graduation and as they start working on their final projects. They seldom realize that if they wanted to get good job, they should target to get some project sanctioned/aligned from industry. This will take them away from any such platform or language not readily used in industry.