Kentucky: Programming Language = Foreign Language 426
jackb_guppy writes with word that "Legislation that would let students use computer programming courses to satisfy foreign-language requirements in public schools moved forward in the Kentucky Senate on Thursday." From the article: "Kentucky students must earn 22 credits to graduate high school, but 15 of those credits represent requirements for math, science, social studies and English — and college prerequisites call on students to have two credits of foreign language, [state senator David] Givens said.
Meanwhile, Givens pointed to national statistics showing that less than 2.4 percent of college students graduate with a degree in computer science despite a high demand in the market and jobs that start with $60,000 salaries."
headline fix (Score:5, Funny)
Kentucky: English Language = Foreign Language
Re:headline fix (Score:5, Funny)
Kentucky: Language = Foreign
Bourbon = economy
Guns = Free Speech
Re:headline fix (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you're missing the real point here. Computer languages are NOT foreign languages. Foreign languages teach mental dexterity in the verbal domain and allow people to experiences worldviews other than their own. Computer languages teach systematic thinking.
So what you really need here is:
"Kentucky: Logic = Foreign Language."
Re: (Score:3)
Some Universities in Florida have been doing this (sub computer language for foreign) since I was in High School, 30 years ago.
I know /. doesn't carry the newest news, but please.... just because Kentucky is considering it now?
Re: (Score:3)
I think you're missing the real point here. Computer languages are NOT foreign languages. Foreign languages teach mental dexterity in the verbal domain and allow people to experiences worldviews other than their own. Computer languages teach systematic thinking.
You're not a programmer, are you? Good programmers are often both verbally and mathematically talented, and they take great advantage of the language as an art form, not just a system of doing calculations. Being a pure mathematician or a linguist won't necessarily make a great programmer, but a certain combination often does. Then again, I think math is a language and artform in the same way.
Re: (Score:3)
Foreign languages teach mental dexterity in the verbal domain and allow people to experiences worldviews other than their own.
No I'm pretty sure that "foreign" languages exist so that people in "foreign parts" can communicate with each other, not simply to entertain and culturally enrich Americans. Besides you cannot learn "culture" through language. You have to actually er, live the culture. I don't base this on "stuff I saw on a travel documentary", I've actually lived all my life in several foreign countries and I am fluent in 4 languages. The "cultural enrichment" aspect of learning/speaking a foreign language is good only for
Re:headline fix (Score:4, Insightful)
Memorizing a thousand poems will not make your mind sharper
No, but actually reading them might.
there's lots of them (Score:2)
Re:there's lots of them (Score:5, Informative)
In Ontario we used to have this thing called OAC(Grade 13) which gave you equivalent degrees or partial credits towards university. So in a sense, they can be valuable. When they killed and gutted grade 13 here, the quality of students entering university dropped through the floor.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:there's lots of them (Score:4, Interesting)
Advanced Placement classes give you credit at most colleges. You could spend your senior (12) year getting English, calc, physics, foreign language, and maybe a few others. The tests are relatively cheap, but since we are talking about Ky here, the governor's scholars program covers the cost for 3 if you pass. 12 credits, plus mote if you take pre tests like comp sci.
You can get at least one semester out of the way for a few hundred dollars.
you know (Score:5, Funny)
I want to mock kentucky, because it's the right thing to do, but this actually kind of makes some sense.
Re:you know (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe, but good luck next time you're in a foreign country trying to buy food using for loops and if statements.
You can do just that (Score:3)
good luck next time you're in a foreign country trying to buy food using for loops and if statements
Actually, anyone can do just that [apple.com] these days.
Re:you know (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe, but good luck next time you're in a foreign country trying to buy food using for loops and if statements.
You're being modded "funny" but I think you deserve "insightful".
I'm an old fart, but I really don't like the recent trend in colleges - and now high schools - where we're apparently moving towards a completely utilitarian education and away from attempting to develop well-rounded individuals and citizens.
It's not all about money and what kind of job you have.
And I must admit... I wonder if we nerds are at least partially to blame. Engineers and computer geeks often tend towards an almost Aspergers-like tunnel vision.
Re:you know (Score:5, Interesting)
That's a very valid point, but what I remember of modern language teaching at school (French in my case) was very utilitarian. Just lots of vocabulary, conjugation rules etc. to memorise - all how to speak the language but very little as to why you'd want to bother and little of intellectual interest. Latin was better, in that we actually looked at examples of Latin literature and poetry and the Roman civilisation. Shame the language was much harder, with all the noun declensions and so forth.
All a bit of a waste really, as there's a lot of interesting things to learn about languages. The scientific side - how they evolve over time, how various languages relate to each other - cognate words, sounds shifts etc. And the literary/cultural side for those that way inclined.
In any case, I can't see anything that programming languages have in common with natural languages besides the word "language".
Re: (Score:2)
The blame lies firmly in where the colleges and universities are getting their funding, and the fact that many states, including mine, have upgraded the status of 'technical schools' to 'colleges' rather than recognizing that there is a difference and that becoming a programmer is a technical school program, rather than a BS or Masters degree program in a college or university.
However as most universities are continuing to look for funding from businesses who really couldn't care less about having a well ro
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe, but good luck next time you're in a foreign country trying to buy food using for loops and if statements.
Not a problem in Kentucky. Most of them don't even own passports.
http://www.theatlantic.com/nat... [theatlantic.com]
Re:KY SB 16 2014 (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
rather than study Latin you could have learned any of the other languages as a base to aiding learning of other Latinate languages.
Latin should be left to priests, even the use in biology is silly.
Re:KY SB 16 2014 (Score:5, Informative)
"Romance languages". Not "Latinate languages"[sic].
Learning Latin because you want to learn one Romance language is counter-productive, but if you want to learn a bunch of them, basic Latin is really helpful. It helps you to understand the languages' quirks better - and to predict them. Simple examples: /k/) or an S (always /s/) in that position.
*Italian: words like uovo-uova that change gender when plural: check for Latin 2nd declension neuter words.
*French: it's far easier to put circumflexes if you remember which words had an S in Latin, as hôpitalhospital or maîtremagister.
*Portuguese: wondering if you should use Ç or S? Check if Latin had a hard C (always
Portuguese won't help you with Italian plurals, Italian won't help you to put French circumflexes and French will barely give you orthographic clues for Portuguese. And, even without being a Romance language, it also helps a lot with English, due to the amount of borrowings the language did from Latin and Norman [itself a Romance language].
It's also worth mentioning that Classical Latin (the non-church one) has a HUGE literature, and translations in general usually suck.
TL;DR: "Latin should be left to the priests" my ass.
[Even because they can't pronounce Latin for shit. "ky-loom", not "cheh-lo", paedicatores stulti.]
Re: (Score:3)
No one is saying that Latin would not be useful in learning other romance languages, but I do not see how understanding various quirks of etymology (ex. forêt used to have an S, just like English forest still does) is sufficiently valuable to merit learning an entirely separate language, even if it is the ancestral language, as opposed to simply learning those various things that it would help you with. Learning Latin as an aid, unless you are learning the languages to study linguistics, while interes
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Then you wasted your years in college.
Re:KY SB 16 2014 (Score:5, Funny)
Romani ite domum
Someone will keep his balls...
Re:KY SB 16 2014 (Score:5, Insightful)
HS language courses are the biggest waste of time. Do you actually learn anything in a HS language class? Just enough to recognize the language you are reading, maybe make fun of the weird shit they do in other countries, but definitely not well enough to be able to converse.
Actually, I took (four years of) Spanish in high school, then tested into the advanced Spanish classes in college, which were mostly composition and literature, and I only had to take them because I had a Spanish minor (or I would have tested out otherwise). I also studied in Mexico during this time and was obviously able to converse, but I learned the majority of that during high school and would have been perfectly fine then, too. Some people are just not quite as good at learning foreign languages as others, and certainly the quality of education varies (I went to a really small school, by the way, but I think we had good teachers, including one native speaker), but it's absolutely false to claim that you won't learn anything in an HS language class.
A computer programming language, however, is completely different. While I think it's useful to learn both, this proposal seems to lump them under the same skill, and I don't think that's accurate or a good way to do it. (I have a BA in CS and an MA in linguistics, including applied/SLA, so I do have experience with both, by the way.)
Re:KY SB 16 2014 (Score:5, Insightful)
While the AC's account of foreign languages in high school is likely reasonably accurate for a large number of people, I think that the increasing denigration of language skills (including English) is yet another trend that needs to be reversed in American schools. The problem for Mr. AC is that he probably took 1 year of Spanish and got little out of it. An hour a day for one year doesn't get you very far. I took three years of Russian, came out reasonably fluent and took another two years in college. No, it's not terribly 'useful' unless I decide to change to a life of cybercrime, but I think it's important to be able to think in another language, look at another culture carefully and come up with a less parochial world view. The latter being the most important part these days.
Too many Americans don't understand the world past the 5:00 news. That is a truly scary thought.
But, back on topic, computer languages and foreign languages are nothing alike academically and socially - but if something gets kids to think in high school, it can't be all bad.
Re:KY SB 16 2014 (Score:5, Interesting)
The ability to speak multiple languages, to some degree at least, is commonplace around the world. Monolingualism seems particularly severe in Anglosphere countries (including my own).
In Australia there's been a move away from teaching European languages in favour of the languages of Asia from the trade perspective. It's also a shorter duration to fly to Japan (whose language my brother's kids are learning) than the 20 or so hours to fly from Melbourne to Vienna or Paris.
Re: (Score:2)
A computer programming language, however, is completely different. While I think it's useful to learn both, this proposal seems to lump them under the same skill, and I don't think that's accurate or a good way to do it. (I have a BA in CS and an MA in linguistics, including applied/SLA, so I do have experience with both, by the way.)
That's right. Foreign languages and computer languages are both called "languages," and they each teach something useful, but they're completely different. It's like the difference between lightening and a lightening bug.
Actually, with Google Translate, foreign language TV, and foreign music on the Internet, it's easier to learn a foreign language than it ever was. I used to look up words in my dictionary and think, "Some day, we'll have a computer ...."
So I speak four languages now? (Score:4, Insightful)
Good to know if I ever need a federal government job...
Sheesh.
This is either someone trying to beat the system, or perhaps the system beating itself to some degree. Why is the plain meaning of "foreign language" in an English-speaking country even up for debate?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
In Canada most universities will accept math to fulfill a grade 12-level second language requirement, and have for decades. The point is not that you can order a beer in some other country while on vacation, it's that your brain has been stretched in the right direction. It makes sense.
Federal government jobs require that you actually speak French (and English) well enough to serve someone in that language, because there the point is that you actually speak the second language. That's well beyond what a
Re: (Score:2)
Federal government jobs require that you actually speak French (and English) well enough to serve someone in that language
That is the theory, not the actual practice. Canadian government jobs require that you pass tests that are substantially more difficult than you need in order to serve French speakers, because the French-speaking lobby is politically powerful. A good part of it is a waste of money and I know people who have been unable to advance in government, despite having no problem communicating with French-speakers, because they are unable to pass the test.
Re: (Score:3)
You can always complain that a test is too hard or too easy. I think it's pretty ridiculous that a government employee in Whitehorse has to be able to speak French while the ones in Montreal often sigh as if speaking to you in English is a major ordeal, but that's irrelevant to the discussion. The point is that the second language requirement for government service and the one for getting into university have different intentions and the OPs conflation of the two is misleading.
Re: (Score:3)
2.4% duh (Score:4, Insightful)
Only 2.4% percent, well yeah ... it's only CS people. Since when did technology development only depend on CS graduates? Last I checked, there are more and more focus/applied degrees every year which would probably take care of a good number of those positions. Not every job needs a theoretical background, and all of those job postings for "App Developers" probably don't require a hardcore degree a this point ...
Re:2.4% duh (Score:5, Interesting)
Pretty much spot on.
I'm sure the research scientist or business major that learns a great deal about applied computer usage, including some aspect of programming, need never pass by a CS classroom or know Donald Knuth from Donald Duck. Similarly, those students that get into hardware infrastructure don't need a great deal of programming either.
Still, the bill seems more aimed at allowing people to get out of high school without ever once encountering a Spanish word not written on a menu, than actually growing the computer literacy in the state.
Re: (Score:2)
I like this idea (Score:4, Interesting)
Effectively, for me, two of those courses were a completely forced waste of time.
Taking more classes on programming/software development would have been much more useful.
Re:I like this idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Which entirely misses the point of a broad education. If you look at it that way we'd do basic courses in the first 6 grades then farm everyone not going to college to a trade school. I believe there is a certain amount of general knowledge everyone should have so that a society can function. The problem in the last few decades is we've allowed too much dumbing down and now we're reaping what we've sowed.
You are the one missing the point (Score:5, Interesting)
Which entirely misses the point of a broad education.
Taking programming courses is every bit as broadening as taking a language course. Just in different dimensions.
Indeed I would hazard to say you would retain more overall from a programming course than one or two semesters of a language course.
In no way are we dumbing down people allowing them to study computers more in depth over language.
Re: (Score:2)
Taking more classes on programming/software development would have been much more useful.
How many of your high school classmates became programmers? How many have spent more than a week abroad? How many are working in environments where language skills are a marketable asset?
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
My highschool required 3 years of a foreign language to graduate, 0 of which I had any interest in, and only 1 (the first) had any real-life applicability (spending a week in Mexico City).
Effectively, for me, two of those courses were a completely forced waste of time.
Taking more classes on programming/software development would have been much more useful.
When I was in college/highschool I took CS and years of French and Arabic. It took me longer to graduate and many of my fellow CS students told me I was wasting my time, or that if I learned a language I should learn Chinese, but I love languages, other cultures, and technology. I studied abroad in North Africa and became fluent in both languages.
At graduation I started out as a lowly programmer for a large company. As word got around that I was fluent in these two languages, I began to be regularly call
Re: (Score:3)
My high school in Oregon classified Music as a foreign language credit. Didn't hear one single gripe from any teachers. Can't imagine this would be any different - I doubt kids will be lining up outside the lab to learn Java instead of French.
Re:I like this idea (Score:5, Interesting)
In 25 years the Baby Boomers will be just as influential as they are now. But there will be a lot fewer of them around.
The English language is not dying. In fact, it is the fastest growing language in the world. When Finnish businessmen sell telephones to Indonesia in exchange for tropical wood lumber and spices, no one speaks Finnish or Indonesian. They speak English.
Also note that in 25 years, when people who only speak English need to communicate with peasants that only speak legacy languages, they will smile gracefully and speak into a microphone and their personal-translator unit will reproduce their translated words into that legacy language.
It's not that difficult to learn sufficient Spanish as an adult. About one third of the vocabulary is cognitively identical to English. Its grammar is functionally similar to all the other Romance languages. The Romance linguistic framework is not hard for people who have learned English in a structured school environment, because other Romance language speakers (the French and the Normans) ruled England for hundreds of years in the Middle Ages and set the grammar rules that continue to be used to this day.
Re:I like this idea (Score:5, Interesting)
Let me add just a bit to your comment on Spanish. Spanish is the single easiest commonly used, spoken language an American can learn. It has a TINY vocabulary (you can claim fluency knowling well less than 10,000 words). There are native speakers all around you who love talking to English speakers in Spanish (not only is it hilarious, the English speakers are buying things and helping them makes them repeat customers). It's actually USEFUL, and you can start putting it to good use right away in almost any state. Try that with German! And then there's what you said.
ASL is also dead-easy, but it's not spoken, per se, not really written, and only useful in deaf schools. That said, you lean ASL and you can pick up other SLs accross the globe faster than anyone can pick up a new spoken language, and there's deaf folk in every country.
Should be Alternative Language Requirement (Score:4, Interesting)
I sucked at Spanish in high school, harder than calculus. I got around language requirements in college via some comparative religion courses (which worked out great as one teacher turned me onto Hermann Hesse, changed my life).
The only problem I see with this change is called it a Foreign Language. If it was Alternative Language I wouldn't see anything wrong with it.
I see learning a programming language, which I assume mean learning some programming, as highly valuable to anyone. If taught properly (I've never seen this), it can provide a solid logic base (and, or, not) and a deeper understanding of decision making (conditionals).
My wife had a total of 8 years of French and spent a semester in Paris. She hasn't used it yet and is no longer very fluent. As for applied knowledge, her spreadsheet skills are good, but she trips up on logic and conditionals.
Why is there a foreign language requirement anyway?
Re:Should be Alternative Language Requirement (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is there a foreign language requirement anyway?
Yesterday, my best friend spoke to an american supplier and told them that he wanted the goods shipped to Europe. Not some weird, small country but Europe. The supplier asked where Europe was in the US.
I think You guys could do with a foreign langue or two. Not to mention geography...
Re: (Score:2)
The thing is, if geography is skipped, does a foreign language make any sense?
Actually, I would argue that it does, or can. But, OTOH, if you haven't learned basic geography, you probably won't be the kind of person who will benefit from a foreign language. (It's not the rote memorization that helps, it's the learning to think with a different grammar. And a different division of the world. E.g. in French every noun must be either masculine for feminine. In German, little girls are neuter, and rivers a
Re: (Score:2)
World According to Americans [xkcd.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Everybody knows Paris is in Texas.
He's still an idiot though.
Re:Should be Alternative Language Requirement (Score:5, Insightful)
I call bs on your little anecdote. If someone was told to ship something to a place they weren't familiar with, they wouldn't ask "where in the US is that?". They would simply ask "where is that?" because they are already in this country and obviously assumed it was simply a place they didn't know about. Further I have never met anyone, no matter how uneducated, who did not know what Europe was.
Re: (Score:2)
Europe is nothing more than a bunch of weird small countries. Always has been, always will be.
Lighten up on the Americans. Their famed lack of precision knowledge in any individual field is basically inconsequential now that there are Google computers that can instantly deliver the general facts that we laugh at them for not knowing.
Here's your best friend's conversation:
(American receptionist) Hello,
(your best friend) Allo Bonjour Est-ce que vous parlez francais? Je voudrais que mon order soit avait
Re: (Score:3)
Only Texans, for whom it is reasonable (just as it's reasonable for Georgians to assume Athens, Georgia instead of Athens, Greece -- but they all damn well know the Greece version exists!)
Georgia (Score:2)
(just as it's reasonable for Georgians to assume Athens, Georgia instead of Athens, Greece -- but they all damn well know the Greece version exists!)
However, most Americans will assume you are talking about Georgia in the United States when someone mentions Georgia, and will not know there is a Georgia in Eastern Europe.
Re:Should be Alternative Language Requirement (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
I took Latin, which covered a surprisingly large amount of Roman history and geography. (Unfortunately, it did not cover learning how to actually speak the language conversationally.)
Re:Should be Alternative Language Requirement (Score:4, Interesting)
"Why is there a foreign language requirement anyway?"
To unlearn things you "know" about language that just aren't so.
For example, in no English class that I took was any tense other than past, present, and future named. To learn what perfect, imperfect, and pluperfect versions of those tenses were for I had to take French and translate it myself back into English
Re: (Score:2)
You never learned of subjunctive, conditional, imperative, indicative? All native english speakers I talk to said they did.
French is my first language, and it is pretty silly with all its extra tenses. Not too sure what it brought to your life to learn them...
Re: (Score:3)
You never learned of subjunctive, conditional, imperative, indicative? All native english speakers I talk to said they did.
-- They learned a few of those terms when studying french. There's only one unusual use of pure subjunctive mode in English that I know of: the grammatically correct use of "if I were..." instead of the common form "if I was..."
French needs all of its tenses because it has such a high percentage of vowel-based phonemic constructions and the tenses (with all their slightly different
Re:Should be Alternative Language Requirement (Score:5, Insightful)
For example, in no English class that I took was any tense other than past, present, and future named. To learn what perfect, imperfect, and pluperfect versions of those tenses were for I had to take French and translate it myself back into English
I was = past
I am = present
I will be = future
but you've never needed
I have been = perfect
I was being = imperfect
I had been = pluperfect
Pretty much all languages express the same tenses, it just depends on how. True, some languages don't have as many tenses but then it's usually indicated by word ordering or some other way. For exampe in German the difference between "I had money" and "I would have had money" is "I hatte Geld, aber.." and "Ich hätte Geld, aber...". In Norwegian it would be "Jeg hadde penger, men..." and "Hadde jeg penger, men..." and it's really all the same. In English extra words, in German new forms of words and in Norwegian different ordering of words. But the tenses exist as such and any language would have a way of expressing it.
Re: (Score:3)
I was = past I am = present I will be = future but you've never needed I have been = perfect I was being = imperfect I had been = pluperfect
Pretty much all languages express the same tenses, it just depends on how.
It is far from that simple. English does not have a future tense. There are many different constructions for talking about the future, with various nuances of meaning. For example, you can say ...
I will fly to America
I'm going to fly to America
I'm flying to America next week
There are at least 12 different future constructions in common use in English, of which the above are just the most frequently used.
Every language has its own quirks. Some languages don't bother with tenses at all. Le
Excellent news (Score:5, Funny)
Sounds good to me. (Score:4, Interesting)
Not sure what the deal is with all the hate here in the thread. Isn't the Slashdot groupthink supposed to say that anything that exposes people to computers and programming is a good thing? Even when it's that nonsense of trying to teach primary grade-schoolers to code?
People are a lot less likely to take a computer programming language than they are a foreign language class in high school, but I'd say the computer programming course is more valuable to them. If they take the semester or two of foreign language, they will likely have forgotten it in a couple years from non-practice and even if they did want to study further will be having to start at year one anyway in college. If they never travel to a country where they speak the language what they do learn will be limited usefulness in life. It's another one of those subjects people study to be a more rounded person. But exposure to programming means learning more about computers in general and how to operate them, that means less idiots in offices hitting "reply all" when unnecessary or looking for the "any" key. And even those who decide programming isn't for them will come away with a better understanding (and possibly respect) for those that do go into programming.
Y'all Goto 10 (Score:3)
Or moonshine. Or bluegrass.
Re: (Score:3)
Sounds a lot like (Score:4, Funny)
This sounds a lot like the "Pizza is a vegetable" nonsense I remember reading about a few years ago.
You know what? (Score:2)
$60k? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Damnit. That was suppose to read:
In Kentucky? Starting software developer fresh out of college? $60k? Uh huh. Sure.
An international embarrassment (Score:5, Interesting)
Granted, Kentucky is not representative of the whole US, but a perfect example of how we repetitively embarrass ourselves internationally.
Most of the world is multilingual. Learning another language provides skills unrelated to coding. In addition to the obvious benefit of communication, it provides the student with a wider vocabulary and the ability to basically know the meaning of many, many new words they may hear while studying, without the use of a dictionary.
How many Europeans know only one language? How many Indians or Chineese? Virtually none that have education.
We've carried the big stick for too long, if you can't see that you need to have the ability to play internationally, you'll be stuck with a Kentucky education and sadly ignorant .
Re: (Score:3)
Many Europeans know another language because they live close to a border where the people on the other side speak a different language, or they even live in a country where the people have more than one native language. They know another language because it is directly useful in their everyday life, not because knowing another language is good all by itself or because of indirect benefits like knowing the meaning of new words that are related to that language. The US is pretty big and it's a lot more comm
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
To go that route it has to be specific languages. English isn't my first language, yet putting aside talking to my mother, my primary language has been useful exactly once in the last 4 years. I can go out and learn Lao for giggles, that isn't exactly going to bring much to my life aside abstract cultural benefits.
If you say we should learn some mandarin, spanish, or hindi, yeah, I guess. But many other languages will not bring much more than taking a couple of international culture classes of some kind wou
About time. (Score:3)
I have a completely opposite opinion. I think the foreign language requirement is BS. Maybe under the conditions that people who made the requirement were thinking of provided a good enough reason to make that a requirement; however, today that is NOT the case.
At least with programming they will be exposed to logic and having to think differently in a way that is not naturally human. Yes, it's unlikely they'll get proper programming experience to have the desired impact on them, but that already is the cas
var langs, about_time = new Date() (Score:5, Funny)
langs = [
{
"name":"C",
"popularity": 49
},
{
"name":"Java",
"popularity": 53
},
{
"name":"JavaScript",
"popularity":82,
},
{
"name":"Perl",
"popularity": 3
},
{
"name":"PHP",
"popularity":64
},
{
"name":"Python",
"popularity":57
}
];
langs.sort(function(a,b) {
if (a.popularity < b.popularity) { return 1; }
if (a.popularity > b.popularity) { return -1; }
return 0;
});
if (langs[0].name == 'javascript') {
console.log("Tell me about it, seems whenever I go out drinking everyone is speaking in Javascript these days.");
} else {
console.log("Dude, I don't even know what you are saying");
}
Success = English && C++ (Score:3)
Wasn't it George Gilder who said that the only languages that anyone needed to know to be successful today are English and C++?
So what that Kentucky uses a programming language like BASIC to satisfy their foreign language 'requirement'? It's not like anyone speaks a foreign language in Kentucky. Except Spanish, and the Mexicans aren't going to know the difference between Kentuckians speaking KY_BASIC and KY_Spanish anyway.
10 ? "I'm smart, educated, trained, and ready for world-class productivity employment"
20 Goto 10
Was it Bill Gates who invented using the question mark as the PRINT token? If I recall correctly, he personally brought back to life the BASIC language by writing assembly language interpreters for every microprocessor available in the 1970s. Does he speak any foreign language?
Not a language (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Technical salaries paid by the Commonwealth of Kentucky are approximately 40% below the regional market average.
Not as bad as all that when considered within the context of the cost of living in Kentucky.
For example, consider what $300,000 will buy you for a house in Kentucky (and many other Southern states) verses in Western Washington State where I live. I, Puget Sound, $300K will buy me a two bedroom "fixer-upper" next to a crack house.
kentucky needs help (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Considering what Texas has been doing to the schoolbooks recently, books from 1950 might be considered an improvement.
Matter of fact (though this is high school, not grade school) the 1950 is when they still used variations of Euclid's geometry to teach geometry with rather than set theory. I'm not a real fan of the way modern education has been changing.
Mind you, I can imagine many ways in which an underfunded school system is bad. (I live in an area with one.) But not being able to follow the latest f
Re: (Score:3)
1950s textbooks would work great for math and pretty good for literature, but perhaps less well for science or history.
Re: (Score:3)
The most important thing (IMO) missing from history would indeed be the civil rights movement.
Science, however, would be missing several (again, IMO) important things: plate tectonics and DNA's role in heredity.
If you're not learning calculus (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
You'd be better served by going to the original Archimedes for that actually. Newton was a piker.
Re: (Score:3)
Depends on where you are in Kentucky. Oh, everyone loves the narrative that Kentucky is filled with barefoot overall-wearing good ol' boys with a mason jar of moonshine on the creaky porch with a sprig of wheat coming out of the corner of their mouth, but everyone seems to forget that if you cross a river in Northern Kentucky, you are in the Central Business District of Cincinnati, Ohio; a fairly large city with significant history and home to several Fortune-100 headquarters.
Yes, $300k will go farther tha
Re: (Score:2)
Oh, everyone loves the narrative that Kentucky is filled with barefoot overall-wearing good ol' boys with a mason jar of moonshine on the creaky porch with a sprig of wheat coming out of the corner of their mouth
It's your own fault for coming up to New York with a banjo and picking up girls in Washington Square Park with your Kentucky accent and hillbilly stories.
Re: (Score:3)
My girlfriend clued me in that those stories they tell about screwing sheep are strictly for the benefit of credulous city boys.
Re:Not if you work for the Commonwealth of Kentuck (Score:4, Funny)
Re: Not if you work for the Commonwealth of Kentuc (Score:5, Informative)
I know it is popular to mock the Southern US, but lame values of living are relative. I live in rural Southern Alabama, which is probably not much different than rural Kentucky. I have a nice 2 story home overlooking a pond. My morning commute to work is around 20 minutes if you count dropping the kids off at school. I might pass 10 cars during rush hour. I know most of my neighbors for a mile in both directions. When I want to go on a walk in the park, my backyard has 130 acres of pine trees planted. Sure the pay scale is not as much as a similar job in other areas, but neither is the cost of living. What would $70,000/year get you in Chicago?
Re: Not if you work for the Commonwealth of Kentu (Score:5, Funny)
Shhhhhh! I am OK with people not knowing how beautiful most of the southern US is. If they find out, they will ruin it.
Re: Not if you work for the Commonwealth of Kentuc (Score:5, Informative)
Sorry, but I've seen rural Alabama and rural Kentucky. From my experience, Kentucky's doing significantly better.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
Thinking it will get you a 6 block section in Detroit, but I haven't checked the prices lately. Mind you it's a bit of a fixer upper project.
Re: (Score:2)
Programming a dishwasher is simple, doesn't need much of a language.
Although of course back in the early days of robotics people were thinking of general purpose humanoid style robots doing the household chores, including dishes. (like the Dad in Robots) and it would take some effort to program that task (its mentioned in Heinleins The Door to Summer
Re: (Score:2)
Quit forcing me to BETA pages, I'm sick of it.
Log in if you want to avoid the BETA site.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Why is Kentucky such a backward place? (Score:4, Funny)
That's a good question. After all, not only does the best Bourbon Whiskey come from there, they produce a wonderful jelly. [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:3)
If you live in a state with abbreviation KY, you deserve to get shafted.
However, anything that promotes the use of computer science and technology to students who are crap at languages (like I was) cannot be that bad.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Latin is taught in a way much more similar to that which you describe.
Re: (Score:2)
And yet, Latin was offered as a foreign language at my high school...
(You are right that it was sort of "cheating" the requirement, though!)
Re: (Score:2)
suspect that it may be baysian poisoning, but they might be search string keys for NSA metatag searches. (Whether the submitter knows that or not.)