Re: Education and security -- another perspective (was "ACM Queue - Content")

[der Mouse <mouse () Rodents Montreal QC CA>]

> I see both of you willing to mandate the teaching of C and yet not
> mandate the teaching of any of Ada, Pascal, PL/I etc.

> This seems like the teaching of "making do".

And is not making do an important skill?

More seriously, as long as Unix variants maintain their position of
importance (something that shows no signs of going away), C will be an
important language for anyone outside academia to know - and many of
those inside academia.  As such, I would say that any program with so
much as pretensions to preparing people for the real world needs to
teach it to some extent.

Certainly not exclusively (I know I'm a better programmer for knowing
many languages).  Perhaps not even predominantly.  But as theoretically
ugly as it may be, it is still pragmatically critical.

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