jerryk@pro-beagle.cts.com (Jerry Kindall) (03/24/89)
I attend a small community college in Columbus, Ohio. True, the college is geared toward cranking out COBOL programmers in two years. The reason I am going there is that basically it's the only game in town besides Ohio State University (which I attended for a year but couldn't cope with). (I realize that there are other schools I could go to but Columbus State has the advantage of being affordable, and I can get out in two years.) To get to the point... this is a school that teaches you Assembly first. The reason for this is simple: to weed out people who simply don't have the aptitude for programming. If you can make it through assembler without knowing much else about computers, you what it takes to program a computer. Columbus State prides itself in producing gradutates who UNDERSTAND how the machines work, and can think for themselves, instead of being "formula programmers". CS graduates know WHY COMP-3 in COBOL is the same as packed decimal in assembler. If they come across something they don't know in the Real World, they can get a book on it, read up on it, and UNDERSTAND it. I secretly think that the reason Assembly is taught first is to make COBOL look good. :) With my interest in Apples and other micros, what I am I doing learning to be a COBOL programmer instead of becoming a REAL programmer? Well, as I mentioned above, I couldn't cope with Ohio State. I think that with my programming abilities I will be able to get somewhere in the Apple arena anyway. I hope. :) - Jerry Kindall crash!pnet01!pro-beagle!jerryk jerryk@pro-beagle.cts.com GEnie: J.KINDALL Alink: JKindall