I spoke to 2nd year Comp Sci undergraduate a few days ago. I'm about 70% sure he said the main language they teach is Java (I don't recall him ever speaking about C/C++). I was telling him about my forays into Haskell and how function composition combined with recursion often confuses me.
His reply: What's recursion?
It's surprising really. Although I hate Java it does have a wide range of concepts within, including recursion surely. Perhaps they focus on displaying a GUI window rather than understanding binary search, etc.
* * *
I think drawing up an "Arts" programme in computer science is a good idea. But only as a MA lest you'll see more variations of the aforementioned example. Things are different in the UK though because university enrolment is linked to university funding.
If I did meet an artistic person who was interested in computer science I'd give her the following advice: learn the very basics of computer hardware (input, encoding into bits and logic, ouput), learn how to read programming documentation/books/tutorials (I'm not sure how I'd expand on this). Once you've understood for loops, switch statements, closures, recursion, etc take those in the same way you took the building blocks you used in your childhood games. Then build something using them.
Of course it may well be wise to take an undergraduate in computer science (of the old c/c++ kind -- ones that focus on core concepts basically) to practice the for loops, closures, etc if the artistic person isn't great at self-study.
His reply: What's recursion?
It's surprising really. Although I hate Java it does have a wide range of concepts within, including recursion surely. Perhaps they focus on displaying a GUI window rather than understanding binary search, etc.
* * *
I think drawing up an "Arts" programme in computer science is a good idea. But only as a MA lest you'll see more variations of the aforementioned example. Things are different in the UK though because university enrolment is linked to university funding.
If I did meet an artistic person who was interested in computer science I'd give her the following advice: learn the very basics of computer hardware (input, encoding into bits and logic, ouput), learn how to read programming documentation/books/tutorials (I'm not sure how I'd expand on this). Once you've understood for loops, switch statements, closures, recursion, etc take those in the same way you took the building blocks you used in your childhood games. Then build something using them.
Of course it may well be wise to take an undergraduate in computer science (of the old c/c++ kind -- ones that focus on core concepts basically) to practice the for loops, closures, etc if the artistic person isn't great at self-study.