Alan Turing and Computer Science ( matter of education )

Orc · 03-21-2008, 06:28 PM

Now, stating that Alan Turing is the modern father of computer science, when dealing with Education nowadays, they want you to learn his ancient language or something that's low level ( E.G. Cobol | Fortran ) which would have some purpose in what way, specifically? Most programmers nowadays don't even use COBOL, or Fortran, more specifically Assembler | C / C++ | PHP ( win ) | Java | etc, which makes it more of a history lesson in Programming? Rather than actually programming the instructions which are converted straight down to BASE 02 ( Binary ), which in fact would be useless to most modern Jobs, unless those skills were harnessed with the power of C/C++ | Assembler.

Is it to make better Programs?

PS . A history lesson is good if you're in Major of Computer Science, but really, what's the point? If its going to be a low level language, then why program in that?

Always good to know them I guess?

Your opinion is welcomed.

PSS Correct me if I'm wrong. ^_^

Orc.

freenity · 03-21-2008, 08:05 PM

I think it's good to know the problems/advantages/disadvantages of a language to be able to compare it to other languages, and it will also help to explain many whys of some things.
Don't know of any use for Fortran or Cobol nowadays.

DeMo · 03-22-2008, 12:51 AM

COBOL is widely used in mainframes.
And Fortran is still used for scientific calculations, mostly in universities I guess.

CoryMathews · 03-22-2008, 12:52 AM

cobol is still used in the business side to computer science, as forthe other 2, they are dead, and Turing gets to much credit for an imaginary computer idea...

stewart · 03-22-2008, 09:12 PM

Yeah COBOL is used quite a bit still. In many business fields.