I work with many Java developers who are reasonably competent in Java but can’t program to save their lives ! They may know the syntax and the API’s but they don’t know the basics like abstract data types and recursion.

It’s far better that they learn the basics using any language (and Scheme is better than most) before they learn Java – it’s only syntax and API’s and doesn’t take long to learn.

Besides, who’s to say that Java will still be widely used 5 years from now – I for one think that it’s had it’s day.

http://www.cs.uwaterloo.ca/prospect/placement.shtml

plus the course descriptions linked at the bottom of that page is as close as it gets to a formal description of the changes. The Web pages for the new courses will come on stream at some point (135 and 136 already exist, 145 is under development).

The natural place to discuss Java is in CS 246, but I don’t know how its instructors will deal with the changes. There is a subcommittee looking at changes to the second-year curriculum.

Ohh I didn’t realize stream 4 no longer exists. That seems reasonable. Does Computer Science at Waterloo still introduce Java to the students at some point? Concepts are very important of course, but so is code. Is there an outline somewhere of all the changes in the first and second year curriculum? Thanks.

A frosh student, having taken no computer science in high school, but having done a term (or even two) of Java based CS classes, is will not be significantly more qualified for co-op jobs, than a student of similar background having spend as much instructional time with Scheme. By the 2nd year, having also seen C and Python, the “lack” of Java will be even less significant.

To quote Robert, from above in the comments:

[Scheme] has actually helped me on my co-op interviews … . Interviewers commented on seeing scheme on my resume, and they were pleased with the answers I gave.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/blog/post/PLNK1VEO3LPERI26L

Note that stream-4 goes away as of this fall, so that all Math/CS students will have experience with C or Python before their first work term.

I have nothing against Scheme, I’m all for learning multiple language paradigms, but I’m greatly concerned about co-op employability.

“The first goal in designing any computer language is minimizing parenthesis.”
“Scheme fails miserably in this respect.”

I, in a sense agree with the first statement.

However, the second statement is false, despite how incredibly obvious it seems at first glance! Scheme code does use more parentheses per line than code in more common languages, but (except for small programs) has fewer lines of code.

A student of mine just wrote a program in Scheme, and it turned out another experienced Python programmer was writing a program for a similar task. We counted the number of parentheses in each, and the Python program had many more (not to mention all the other punctuation), because it required many more lines of more repetitive code. In fact the *comments* in the Python code looked more similar to the Scheme code.

If you want to learn how to program, it takes time, practice, good material, a good medium (programming language), and hopefully you’ve got a good teacher.

If you want to learn a particular language, it takes one book.

There is a big difference. Don’t confuse the two!

If you are going to teach commercial languages such as Java/.NET, do it in the later years. Get the real eduction out of the way first before polluting their minds with this.