If you really want to change the curriculum, I feel that it's important to have a large portion of students along with you that feel the same way.

However, it is also important in knowing what the purpose of your school is in teaching you these languages. Are they trying to teach you concepts and theory that will be building blocks later on or are they trying to give you skills that will be applicable today and when you graduate? If you're trying to get a job when you graduate then maybe you could show the school the statistics for jobs using Perl and form an argument around that. If it's the concepts that are important then perhaps moving on to a fully functional language might be more useful in addition to having a semester of Perl.

I strongly agree especially with your idea concerning the gathering of statistics that show the importance/frequency of use Perl maintains in the workforce.

I attend the Illinois Institute of Technology, and because it is a 4-yr technical school, the primary focus of a CS degree is to understand the _theory_ behind programming, with the design that having understood the fundamentals, a student can go into the workforce and apply the concepts to any language, new or old. I think showing the relevance of Perl in the workforce, combined with a request that the education be geared (in certain aspects) towards real world applications, instead of just theory.

Your input is appreciated and will be incorporated in the final argument!

Perl's compile-then-run approach gives very repid turnaround between editing and testing. It enables the use of

• small meaningful programs from the command line
• snippets to illustrate techniques
• rapid development techniques for larger programs

After Compline,
Zaxo

OO, procedural, functional (to a degree)

I'd probably write that list as: "procedural, functional, OO (to a degree.)" :-)

-sauoq
"My two cents aren't worth a dime.";

The way my style has been developing I'd probably even write that list as: "functional, procedural, OO (to a degree.)" :^)

Makeshifts last the longest.

You hit the nail on the head Zaxo, and put it in very succinct terms. The continuity of my thoughts is easily maintained when writing Perl code because I can just quickly put the source file into the background, and run the program. No need for compiling with varying optimizations, and few arcane error messages that can't be immediately attributed to an exact line of Perl code.

Perhaps the 'rapidity of turnaround' in writing/compiling Perl is a reason why my Perl code is generally very concise and meaningful - of course, I think this is an inherent trait in the language itself as well.

The ability to create meaningful code using the important programming models of the day, I also agree, is a very strong point

I will be sure to incorporate these ideas in my report to the red-tapers!

Very often universities find it difficult to attract good Java/C++ teachers in classes. If it is difficult with C++/Java people, it might be even more difficult with Perl people. Here's a comment on both teachers and students of a course at my university:

Teachers. We have a course on Perl at our Informatics faculty. The course mentor is a mature professor from Formal Systems. However, the teacher assigned is a PhD student - he amazingly contributes to many open source things. If not him, we'd have no Perl course.

Students. Of the ~15 students that follow this course each year ~3 really understand what's going on there. And usually they end up really involved in the course. Others follow the course just for passing. As of me, I think it was an excellent course taught by an excellent guy.

One question would be: What did you learn by having C++ and Java at educational level. Not only it will help you for your current cause, it will also help to you for what you can focus on while learning other languages.

artist