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I live in a sad town..

I went to enroll at my local college and was asked "what's your major going to be?" and I said "computer science"and she said ok and pulled out a piece of paper(this is only a 2 year school btw, which I'm really just going to to get my basics out of the way) with associates degree of information or something and asked if I wanted to be in the "math" and "business" branch. and I said math(business is like.. how to use Word basically lol) and then she said there were 3 different branches I could take for that and showed me the paper.

"Computer science using Java"
"Computer science using C++"
"Computer science using COBOL"

I'm not even freaking kidding.. I almost busted up laughing when I read that last one.. and I just kinda stared at it amazed and said C++... (This is also the college though that had a computer science contest about blackberrys and ipods)

Has anyone else seen such a strange thing at their college or similar?

Don't even get me started.

Computer science isn't be specific to any one language (and environment). You learn the theory and you can apply it in practically any language/environment.

Putting that theory into practice is where language choice comes in. By allowing you to choose a language you can pick the version that best suits you rather than having them force a language on you. Believe me, it's far worse to be forced to use a language than it is to get to choose, even if the choices seem bizarre.

My 2c.

That is "sad". They will learn you to C++ and that is extensible language. New libraries and header comes every day.
Sad was my ex-school (I graduated). We have subject "processors" for one year. Four months of them we had learning intel 8086 to intel Pentium MMX. When it comes to prefetching, we only mentioned it. The teacher said that "There is no information how the prefetching work". I asked him why doesn't he searched in internet. He answered me something that translated to english will be this: "I am working with hardware, I don't know how to use software". LOL! I was shocked. I found why he had a problem with software - he didn't know english. That is what I call "sad town" (it is actually a capitol).
Well at least, since I started learning OS programming, I learn much about hardware design of the computers. I probably will know much more, if I instead go to school, learn OS programming at home.

I don't have that problem - I go to a good university.

They teach MIT Scheme and Ada the first year, some Java (as part of a relational calculus (databases) course - IMHO the wrong language entirely) and Prolog (for an AI course) in the second year, along with assumed knowledge of simple C. In the second year you also learn Z80 assembler which you then use in the hardware labs to complete assessments (assembling and dumping into an eeprom, which you then wire to a Z80 + some ram and a few devices).

Third year, you learn Handel-C, which is a parallelised cut-down version of C made for synthesizing circuits for FPGAs, Haskell, and Alloy, a horrendous horrendous language that I never want to even talk about again (its a formal system specification language). Third years also learn real-time Java and real-time Ada (with a slight touch on RT posix) for the real-time systems course.

All in all - plenty of languages, each different from the last. The language gets taught to aid the course. Simple as that. More languages learned means it'll be easier to pick up a new language when you have to learn one. If you spend your entire degree coding C++, you'll be a little stuffed when your employer asks you to learn rudimentary Haskell by the end of the week...

Computer Science 8: we use RPG Maker: a FFIV-style RPG maker program with drag-and-drop scripting, made in Japan, with anime graphics.

Troy Martin wrote:Computer Science 8: we use RPG Maker: a FFIV-style RPG maker program with drag-and-drop scripting, made in Japan, with anime graphics.

wow... that is sad

Troy Martin wrote:Computer Science 8: we use RPG Maker: a FFIV-style RPG maker program with drag-and-drop scripting, made in Japan, with anime graphics.

Wow, that is so cool... Just not for high education. I once had a RPG RAD kit back when MSDOS was king, that supposedly was able to generate Doom 3D style games. Too bad I couldn't get it actually to run.

Troy Martin wrote:Computer Science 8: we use RPG Maker: a FFIV-style RPG maker program with drag-and-drop scripting, made in Japan, with anime graphics.

In what way is that computer science?

Well,

We have to use Object Pascal at our university, wiki that and one will see there are already 4 examples of different "standards" which makes it really hard to get any consistent documentation. Our secondary school Computer Sciende consisted of learning to work with M$ (Yes, M$) Word and Excel. Powerpoint was unnecessary.

earlz wrote:"Computer science using Java"
"Computer science using C++"
"Computer science using COBOL"

At least you have a list, my local collage only teaches Java O_o

Troy Martin wrote:Computer Science 8: we use RPG Maker: a FFIV-style RPG maker program with drag-and-drop scripting, made in Japan, with anime graphics.

That's what we use for develop-a-game-in-one-day workshops as a college distraction.

Get this: Minimum maps needed: 5. I'm only partly finished and I have fifteen. I still need to "code" the conditional branches and walking between maps, as well as damage modifiers of certain weapons against demons, etc.

Troy Martin wrote:Get this: Minimum maps needed: 5. I'm only partly finished and I have fifteen. I still need to "code" the conditional branches and walking between maps, as well as damage modifiers of certain weapons against demons, etc.

that just sounds horrible.. I always hated those game creator things with drag ad drop..

I remember my friend(one of the only real friends that when he came over, we would program lol.. this was back before I knew C and such though) was like hard core into one of those RPG makers.. he spent like days working on some game.. and really, it was impressive to have been created with such software... I believe he had potential as a real programmer some day.. though I'm not sure what happened to him.. haven't talked to him in probably 3 or 4 years..

At least Game Maker 7 has a C++-style scripting interface... that works...