Comment by GeoffKnauth
Comment by GeoffKnauth 6 days ago
My son went to Northeastern ('19) and now designs programming languages and can program skillfully in ANY language. I'm glad he went to Northeastern before this announced change. I feel my money spent at Northeastern was well worth it, not because it made him employable (it did), but because it gave him critical thinking and research skills. It would be sad if too many future Northeastern grads were limited to programming in Python or whatever the mainstream language of the decade is. "Batteries included" Python is great for the workforce but it may weaken basic development skills of undergrads. I'm glad I grew up in an era (1970-80s) when what mattered was sitting down with a manual or book and picking up a language in a weekend and, working with your friends, mastering it in a few weeks or months. A favorite memory that still astonishes me: in 1983 Andy Sudduth, one of my roommates and soon Olympic rowing medalist, built his own computer (a Heathkit), and with a paper due the next day, I offered to lend him my Kaypro-II so he could use WordStar. He said, "Thanks, but I'm going to put my own operating system on it [which he developed in his OS course], then I'm going to use my own full-screen editor I wrote, and then I'm going to write my paper using that editor." "You're going to do all that by tomorrow?", I asked. "Yes." And HE DID IT.
Hey! Guessing by your handle, your son is Alex, yes? He's done some really cool work. I particularly love his paper "Type Systems as Macros" that he wrote with Stephen Chang and Ben Greenman (my advisor now). Super cool stuff.