~10:00
Hi all. it seems that umist teaches c/c++. to someone with a mathematical/ functional bent like me, it makes me feel sick. i dont mean to offend anyone (but i guess i will anyway) but c is just too low level to be used as an application programming language. and it's weakly typed (this is an issue, because well typed programs will mostly work first time they pass the type checker. (but exceptions arfe another story)). at least they have a copy of sicp in the library :)
theres not too much higher order stuff in the course (which is a common first year shared between software neginerring etc), otoh, maybe they percieve it as being rather academic. some things about functional languages are hard, esp. pure ones. ie: Monads. but not the core stuff. i'll have to ask my tutor when i meet him, i guess.
13:30
it seems that functional languages are not taught because maths is not a requirement for all of the subjects in the common first year. bummer.