I began programming on DOS in BASIC. My second language was Pascal and the third assembly (16 bit at that time). That lasted for many years until I switched to Delphi (win32 RAD with Object Pascal), and I’ve continued through many languages, OSes, and envrionments…until I also got to Java.

Years from that, I hit Java at the University which would classify as Java-school and here are my 2 cents:

In most cases I agree with teaching Java instead of C, data structures with double linked lists, circular linked lists, dynamically allocated hash maps, macro preprocessor, bit operations, assembly, processor registers, segmentation, stack, and other issues.

Why is it good? Because the modern market demands mostly high-level enterprise applications, n-tier transactional systems, business ERP, CMS, e-commerce, web services, RIA, and similar.

Only a very small percentage of job positions consist of highly specialized offers for C / assembly experts. Typically the job of low-level experts is to program semiconductors, controllers, drivers, kernel extensions, analyze malware, etc.

I can do both low-level and high-level, personally I enjoy low-level much more, and I say Java is an excellent choice for most Computer Science graduates. C/C++/assembly are suitable only for a very low number of students and if you had to master them to get your degree, my guess it that 95% of CS students would fail.

Java is good because it teaches state-of-the-art engineering practices. The achieved scale and robustness of Java systems broadly surpasses everything else built up to the date. This is only possible with a disciplined, rigorous implementation as known in other engineering disciplines.

Low-level code, whether in C or elsewhere, is almost exclusively a mess which nobody but the author can understand. It’s nice that the code can be extremely optimized, development done using the V model, real-time systems, etc. BUT the elements of engineering are almost always missing.

To conclude, low-level programming is about dirty hacks, horrible code, endless head-aches, crashes, missing mutexes and spinlocks, corrupted memory, memory leaks, NDAs, poor documentation, inability to see the whole picture, and could often be associated with mental health issues over the time, i.e. depersonalization. You will never stay on the surface, but always dive deep in the blue ocean.

Whereas with Java, you learn sound engineering practices, strictly follow stated rules, import packages, assemble components, think mostly component-wise without much detail, and soon you are done. Easy, highly-demanded, well-paid, risk-free.

Joel doesn’t understand because he hasn’t mastered both low-level and high-level :)

But Joel isn’t really arguing anything. His essay is whining about the good ol’ days—he actually ends with “Feh”—and making some poorly founded assertions about what computer science is and precisely how smart you should be before you’re allowed to graduate. Though he has many good ones, I’d be careful about putting much faith in that particular essay. I’m not convinced, at least.

Really, what Joel wants is for all his applicants to be smart, especially smart in a way he can interpret. He’s getting old, after all.

I’d argue that the way we’re fragmenting CS at UCI is the right way to go. There needs to be a degree, I think, that gives you what you need to know to scribble hyper-optimized Bayesian magic in the Linux kernel with your left hand. Maybe that should be your degree. But there is also value is not teaching students C, and instead expecting them to learn things like the various design disciplines. The latter can make Twitter, and the former can make sure Twitter’s infrastructure can handle the load. (Ahem.)

Besides, in Informatics, UCI starts with Scheme (recursion-only) and some assembly. We do the Java in CS-2. All is not lost.

I wasn’t making fun of C. That is just a factor of using a low level language.

Well sorry for going on about Cal, but it is a great CS school.

First off, every time I read about Joel’s gospels, I wonder… who is this guy? The CEO of a small company. Have you heard of their software? Have you heard of anyone using it? Have you seen it? Their one product seems far to simple to require intense knowledge of pointers – in fact the only real programming hurdle they claim to have jumped is building a VBScript to PHP compiler. Repeat that: a VBScript to PHP compiler. Huh? A bad to worse compiler.

Next: God did not invent the C language. There’s an odd idea that C is the natural language of computers, and that’s entirely incorrect. The speed that C affords and its specific implementation of pointers was the work of a few developers thirty or forty years ago.

Next: “Learning C is something that you generally need to be forced into.”

I’m a college student, at a 1/4 java school, and let me say this: almost all college courses provide an unnatural and ineffective system of learning CS. If you think that you will learn CS via courses primarily, that’s a bummer.

But in the meantime, I went out and bought an AVR butterfly microprocessor from mouser.com for $20.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVR_Butterfly

Then I went and bought John Morton’s book on programming AVRs in assembly language. Short, easy and fun. FUN.

http://www.amazon.com/AVR-Introductory-Course-John-Morton/dp/0750656352/

Next, I will work through a C book on AVR:

http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Microcontrollers-Featuring-Butterfly-Compiler/dp/0976682206/

And finally to tie it all together, I am becoming one with this website:

http://www.avrfreaks.net

Learning AVRs and assembler and C on those devices has been one of the most educational and fun things I have ever done. It just added life to my programming (I’ve been coding for 11 years).

But don’t take my advice…. JUST LEARN JAVA ONLY so that at the next software contract I go for I can wipe you off the map. :o)

have a nice day, Nick

Perhaps a more significant problem is that you’re going to UC-Irvine. Perhaps you should think of transferring to a more widely regarded school.

Perhaps just as important as programmming, he has done a fantastic job writing about programming. Which is something we all enjoy reading about. It’s the same reason Joel Spolsky is widely recognized in the industry.

In the end, Yegge is far greater programmer than most of us can ever hope to be, thus we are not in a position to say that he should not be included in that list.