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PERL Friendly Colleges

by ddebrito (Sexton)
on Jan 05, 2006 at 20:50 UTC ( [id://521336]=perlquestion: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??

ddebrito has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Are there any colleges out there that are PERL friendly? I've got two boys who will be of college age some day. I expect them to learn PERL before they get to college, but it would be nice to target colleges with computer engineering departments that are PERL advocates. For example my coworker is taking master level classes at Stanford and the work is usually specified in Java. He just does his homework in PERL and shakes his head in disbelief as the other students complain how long it took to write and run the homework assignments. So are there any good institutions out there in the sense they encourage the use of PERL?

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Re: PERL Friendly Colleges
by kirbyk (Friar) on Jan 05, 2006 at 21:02 UTC
    Oregon State has the Open Source Labs. While when I was there, C and C++ were the default languages for classes, there'd certainly be above average opportunities to explore Perl and get involved in the whole open source community. Looking at the current course catalog, it hasn't changed signficantly in the last decade.

    -- Kirby, WhitePages.com
    Oregon State CS Alumni, class of 1996

      I know a prof at Oregon State. He's teaching Java to undergraduates. I ask him if the students learn anything about hash data structures in his Java class. No is the answer. What type of education is this? What type of useful programs would you expect from a student that doesn't even have experience in using hashes? "Oh, I really like the way you search your arrays..."
        They don't learn about hashes in his class...maybe he's teaching an introductory course? A number of colleges have gone the OO route for their intro classes. This includes my school, and a number of other nearby schools from what I've heard from friends. OO by itself is a load to learn, adding more complex data structures at the same time would probably be overloading a single course.

        As for learning Perl in school, my college never taught Perl. I got a good grounding in Java and C. I took an optional Theory of Languages class, where we learned a little bit about Prolog, Scheme, Python, and Pizza (an enhanced Java). But even this specialized class only mentioned Perl once. The Professor said he didn't like it as much as Python, and that was that :P.

        All that said, I'm really glad that I did not learn Perl formally. Learning the basics of coding and using Perl as your first language could make learning to code in a much more rigid language really painful. Learn pointers in C, and Perl references become a piece of cake. I think it's a lot more difficult to go from references to pointers though. All my past experience has taught me how much easier Perl is for most tasks than many other languages. It has also given me the wisdom to know when not to use Perl, and the ability to pull out Java, C, or any other language when appropriate.

        Also, based on how my college approached teaching Java, I don't think I'd enjoy a Perl class. They'd probably pick some silly Perl textbook, and have the teachers rigidly follow its structure. The teachers probably would have very little practical experience in Perl, but even if they did, they would have to follow the curriculum or the students in their section would be at a disadvantage for the standard multiple-choice quizzes given to all sections. They likely would not teach about the Perl community, or CPAN. All in all, the language I learned probably would have been very different from the language I stumbled upon while self-teaching myself CGI.
Re: PERL Friendly Colleges
by barrachois (Pilgrim) on Jan 05, 2006 at 22:58 UTC
    I teach Perl courses pretty regularly as part of the computer science program at Marlboro College. We don't have an engineering program, though; it's a liberal arts school and my students tend to do cross disciplinary work that combines computers with music, dance, biology, or whatever.

    Java and C++ are what I've seen as the most popular languages in college programs, though there's a fair amount of variation.

    While I use Perl a lot and think it's a great tool, I also think its a mistake to rate a school as "good" or "bad" depending on whether or not they use your language of choice. IMHO, different languages have different strengths and weaknesses, and so a good computer science education should expose you to some of that landscape rather than leaving you feeling that your way is the only way.

Re: PERL Friendly Colleges
by InfiniteSilence (Curate) on Jan 05, 2006 at 23:26 UTC
    I expect them to learn PERL before they get to college...

    Ahhh, but do you expect them to understanding computing as a discipline in general prior to attending?

    I will be handing my son a math book when I reach this point in his tender life as well as some of the proceedings from the ACM.

    My favorite professor used to say something like this: In the future, all of the simple problems are going to be solved, which will leave you, by the time you graduate, with only the hard ones. If you don't study this (this being using recurrence relations to define recursive functions), will you be prepared?

    Celebrate Intellectual Diversity

Re: PERL Friendly Colleges
by SamCG (Hermit) on Jan 05, 2006 at 21:06 UTC
    Welcome to Perl Monks, ddebrito!

    I don't really know of any specifically Perl-friendly colleges, though the homework questions posted here suggests there are some around.

    Frankly, your question seems a little strange -- you don't mention anything about their ages, or that they're actually interested in computer engineering, or where you'd be willing to send them geographically (I take it California's okay, but what if I referred you to a college in South Carolina, for example?). Forgive me for saying, but you should probably encourage them to do their own college targeting (but make sure they're doing it). It'll make them more self-reliant.

    Sorry I can't be more helpful.
      I picture a father and his son, standing in the tallest tower of Swamp Castle...

      Father: Someday son, all these Perl programs will be yours.
      Son: But I don't want to be a Perl programmer, I just want to.. to... sing!
      Father: Stop that, stop that!

      :)

                      - Ant
                      - Some of my best work - (1 2 3)

Re: PERL Friendly Colleges
by suaveant (Parson) on Jan 05, 2006 at 21:08 UTC
    When I went to WPI (1995-99) they were Perl "friendly" but didn't teach it. I went to a 1 day thing by a student that was introducing Perl, and I was able to do a couple of assignements with Perl. Mainly they taught C, and in Unix, which I consider a good starting point, personally.

    Of course, by the time your kids are there, if not now, they will probably be more heavily into teaching, yuck, Java.

    Am I the only person who is still waiting for Java to deliver what it promised when it was vaporware? Java and XML, bleah.

                    - Ant
                    - Some of my best work - (1 2 3)

      suaveant you have my vote!

      A good grounding in C is possibly the best introduction to Perl I can think of, especially pointer concepts as Perl data structures are largely pointers to pointers to pointers to things..

      One doesn't really go to college/university to become practical.. indeed if someone enters the workforce after university with any useful skills you'd have to ask yourself "what did they study??".

      Perl is a pragmatic language, a bit like a hammer drill is very useful during construction. But the point of college (e.g. a civil engineering degree) is to learn how buildings stay up, not how to use a hammer drill..

      So it is with software, if your boys can learn the concepts of programming and the science behind it (and various arts) then they will be much better grounded for adapting to Perl and other languages as need be.

        I've got no problem with a required C class as a requirement. 2 years of Latin highschool did me good even though I don't directly write or speak Latin in my everyday life. So maybe C is the Latin of computer languages. A required course in assembly language would be great too. Is assembly the ABCs of computer languages? I doubt a course in microcode writing is absolutely necessary. Maybe for computer engineering student but not for computer science. Speaking of science: I think that is why most institutions do not formally embrace PERL. PERL is the bastard child prodigy. PERL was not created from an instution ergo it must not be acceptable. In reviewing my coworker's class notes (from his graduate CS studies at Stanford) it is readily apparent that programming is an art with lots of techniques. It reminds me a little of solving differential equations which is a trial and error of applying different solving techniques to an equation. Anyway my point is why don't higher education institutions stop behaving like old Catholic priests who conduct their masses in Latin with their backs turned to the congregation. Let's speak English! English is a horrible mish mash language that is hybrid mutant with DNA from many other languages. PERL is the English of the computer languages. Lets embrace it. Start teaching PERL as a requirement in colleges.
Re: PERL Friendly Colleges
by shiza (Hermit) on Jan 05, 2006 at 21:48 UTC
    I attended a community college in Fayetteville, NC, back in the late 90's, that had a couple of Perl courses. Maybe you could check your local CC's. If anything, they could do their first 2 years there and then move to a University.

    Ironically, I chose the Intro Java class over the Intro Perl class. Mainly because of the hype that Java was surrounded by back then and my lack of knowledge of computers, much less programming languages.

    I have since seen the light. :)

    Edit:
    Just checked their current catalog out of curiosity and it appears that they still offer a Perl course: FTCC
      I can second Shiza's reccomendation of the CC route. That's where I took my Perl classes and they cost me a whopping $22 a unit! Can't beat that. :)

      I took mine at Canada College in Redwood City, CA, but I haven't looked lately to see if they still offer them though. And do remember that if your area is like mine, there is more than one CC in your area so check around.

      HTH!

      Useless trivia: In the 2004 Las Vegas phone book there are approximately 28 pages of ads for massage, but almost 200 for lawyers.
Re: PERL Friendly Colleges
by swampyankee (Parson) on Jan 06, 2006 at 03:54 UTC

    I view Perl as a tool —a very nice tool —but a tool. Chosing a college because their CS department is Perl friendly (does this mean they won't flunk you for using Perl? Or that they actually teach Perl?) seems a bit of a misplaced priority. What I would look for is a CS department which isn't run by programming language bigots ("language X is horrid because it doesn't have the left-handed ternary tree data type and only a fool would use it") and has good faculty teaching undergrads, good potential for networking (of the human kind), and a fairly rigorous (in technical, not just workload, terms) curriculum.

    I've one offspring in college (sophomore) and one in high school (also sophomore). I'm also very glad I live in the Northeast; it's not hard to find quite a few world class schools within a 3 hour drive.

    emc

    " When in doubt, use brute force." — Ken Thompson
Re: PERL Friendly Colleges
by Fletch (Bishop) on Jan 05, 2006 at 21:10 UTC

    Tangentially related, I happened to come across this blog post bemoaning the ascendency of Java in CS teaching. Back in my day the introductory stuff was all Pascal, and then usually C in later courses (save things like the survey of languages classes, or the AI classes). I don't think there were any specific courses on Perl (or things like shell or awk for that matter). Pretty much something you picked up on your own as needed.

    (And it's "Perl" not PERL.)

Re: PERL Friendly Colleges
by zentara (Archbishop) on Jan 06, 2006 at 12:03 UTC
    As I watch the posts here go by in the time-stream, I am struck by the fact that the field which seems to actively use Perl in research is bio-information and genetics. So maybe look for schools who do DNA research? That would work well with your desire for them to be doctors. :-)

    I'm not really a human, but I play one on earth. flash japh
      Seconded. I'm at a biotech company and most of the people here have had more than a passing exposure to perl.
Re: PERL Friendly Colleges
by DungeonKeeper (Novice) on Jan 06, 2006 at 08:53 UTC
    I would be inclined to take the view that the answer is 'no', unless someone can prove otherwise. But colleges are huge places and it is more likely that the best teaching can be found in some specialist department that has a more practical bias than within the ivory tower of computer science. Take the Stanford example someone raised. I would wager that their http://ccrma.stanford.edu/ is liable to be more advanced and practical than the CS dept. - they even built their own linux kernel to support their multimedia-specific work and this example facility is part of the music department, so would need to be addressed via a combined honours in music and computer science and would only be justified by a joint interest in the subjects. Only a handful of their applications will be written in perl, but at least you can be sure that their projects will be more apt to have chosen languages based on practical rather than academic considerations.

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