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Date:Mon Feb 20 19:04:28 2003 
Subject:Re: worth learning pop11 at university 
From:Jonathan L Cunningham 
Volume-ID:1030220.01 

On Thu, 20 Feb 2003 16:54:04 +0000 (UTC), steve@watchfield.com wrote:

>Hi,
>
>>I'm currently decideing what university to go too, I have got it down too 2,
>>and at one I'll be doing AI and pop11 will be my primary language, at the
>>other I'll be doing more general computer stuff, and Java or c++ will be
>>muy primary language, I f I go to the pop11 I'll teach myself more c++
>>(because of my interesting in Linux coding) but I want to know if you think
>>pop11 is a usefull language worth learning at ini at my primary language,
>
>Short answer: yes.
>
>Long answer:
>
>It obviously depends on what you hope to learn - AI or the techniques 
(snip)

My one sentence answer to this would be: choose the best university.

Here "best" means not only academic reputation, but also how good it
is at teaching what you want to learn. Plus lots of other things, that
will be personal to you.

But I'm reminded of a conversation I had with a German guy once,

"We shouldn't be teaching English as a foreign language to our
school children - we should teach Italian or something else instead."

"Eh? Why?"

"Because they'll have to learn English anyway. So they'll learn more
languages if we *don't* teach them English."

I'm not sure he was entirely serious, but the point is the same.

Except if you learn to program, it is much easier to pick up new
programming languages than it is to learn natural languages.

If you learn pop11, you'll learn some interesting programming
techniques that are natural in pop11, which you can then use in other
languages if you want. And you'll end up learning all the standard
languages anyway.

If you know several languages, including pop11, there will be times
when pop11 seems like the best choice to use. If you only know
Java, you can do everything in Java, but some things will be harder
to do, and you won't even know it.

But I repeat what I said at the beginning: pick the university which
is going to suit you best, taking into account everything, not just
what programming languages it uses. If you are keen, you can learn
other languages later (including pop11, if it isn't taught).

Jonathan

-- 
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