Re: Eiffel anyone? - Who uses it?

[dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)]

Eric says

<<When I attended RIT in the early 80's, you did most of your work in
Pascal for the first few years. Nobody in business was using Pascal back
then and, if it wasn't for Borland screwing with a nice, clean, teaching
language, nobody would be using it today. What was being taught were the
principals of design and programming. As I look back over my career, and
my movement from one platform and language to the next, I realize what
an outstanding education I received.
>>


Nonsense, a lot of serious commercial work in the early 80's was being
done in Pascal. Just because you were unaware of it does not mean it
did not exist. 

I am always amazed at people who make this kind of extrapolation from
their own personal experience, without any attempt to determine the facts!

Recently several faculty members at NYU were arguing in favor of teaching
a widely used language (to me a bogus arguyment, which, if followed should
probably mean teaching either COBOL or Visual Basic). What they really mean
of course is that they are in favor of teaching a language that *they*
are using. Even some of the faculty *teaching* Pascal in our introductory
course made the (quite absurd) statement that Pascal is not currently used
in commercial programming.

Going back to the original thread, I would suggest that if someone's view
of college is to learn current technology that you consider saving a whole
heap of money and attend a trade school instead of paying for college!