Thank you very much for your post. Regarding your question, 'why is Perl not taught in undergraduate school?' I cannot speak for most universities but at my college most of the textbooks were written with examples written in C/C++. Colleges that achieve accreditation for their CS programs must use books that go far in helping their programs meet standard requirements. The books we are using for Perl are excellent and popular but most do not cover many aspects in the abstract/standard/generic terms that are certain to meet the requirements.

Let me give you a quick example. I once attended a OO Perl class at a conference that came with a small course guide. It was a good class; very informative and I enjoyed it a lot. The course guide is on my shelf along with Perl books even though it doesn't fit very well. That being said, the course simply would not have met a college course's requirements or standards for object oriented education. The main problem would have involved the terminology. Encapsulation, inheritance, and polymorphism were simply not described in abstract terms or in-depth.

So this brings to light another important goal for this proposed university -- academic writing should be encouraged by instructors. I'm not thinking of meeting the same kind of rigorous requirements that accredited programs must meet, but there is room to coordinate course material with standard, accepted, and even emerging computer science trends when applicable. This falls under one of the main principles of this proposed university's mission: academic honesty (read my update in the main post ... I plan to write up a more comprehensive/formal proposal for this school describing, among other things, the university's mission). A 'university press' is normally a must for most institutions because, if you have brilliant instructors, the books are quickly outmoded. Perhaps striking a deal with a preferred publisher is the ticket (O'Reilly comes immediately to mind but there are others and even micro-publishing can work).

Celebrate Intellectual Diversity

In reply to Re^2: Perl(Monks) University by InfiniteSilence
in thread Perl(Monks) University by InfiniteSilence

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