University

At the University of Reading, UK

I'm currently attending the Cybernetics Department at Reading University, England. About half way though the second term (I'm now nearing the end of that term) I felt like switching courses to Philosophy. That would mean starting again next year, but I could work and earn lots of money until then so that wouldn't be all that bad. What I'd really like is a combined Philosophy/Cybernetics degree, but there isn't one (not here at least, and there are only one or two other universities with Cybernetics at all). Plus --- I'd rather not move University. Reading isn't the greatest, but it is comfortable and I've made friends here and things.

One of the worst things about the school is there apparent love of Microsoft. Well, that said the head of the Cyb department isn't an MS lover but the CS people certainly are. We are currently "studying" Delphi as part of the Event Driven Programming module. I'm not saying Delphi is hard (it's simply often braindead), it's just an complete waste of time to do the little practicals and make up loads of "design notes" and "tests" to hand in with the (printed !) source code. I could be spending the time doing more useful things (so often I do.)

Being a University, I'd have thought they would teach something not quite so commercial. (They actually suggest we BUY a copy of Delphi !). There are loads of other options, and then in the second or third year we could even study the compiler we've been using. I tried to talk about it briefly with a member of the CS staff, and the main reason seems to be it is easily available (I completely disagree) and looks pretty. Looks pretty. Pardon ? If we can only learn things that look pretty, whose idea was the ASM course ? (BTW, the ASM is by another guy who seems to me to be a real computer teacher. He uses LaTeX for his notes and slides, for example. The Delphi people use Power Point. Actually, most people use Power Point --- even when teaching us Math... the markup is hell to try and learn from.)

In order for me to use Delphi at home, I'd have to buy VMWare, buy Windows and buy Delphi. (Although, right now I'm using Delphi 3 from a cover CD and a VMWare demo).

IMHO, we should start with something like Python or Java. Both of which are portable, free (beer, at least) and actually useful outside Microsofts Empire.