Don't let them write programs and hack them too much
Let them be doctors and lawyers and such!
Credit to John Newton for the title!
John brings up the old issue of people not encouraging their kids to go into the software industry.
I teach a few different IT courses at a private college. The real problem is not that kids don't want to study information technology, it's that they all want to become networking technicians!
When I ask my students about this it soon arises that they think becoming a networking specialist is a lot easier than becoming a programmer. It is definitely true that it's easier to study networking technologies than programming, and becoming an entry-level programmer probably takes a bit more hard work than becoming an entry-level networking technician. Being a CCIE level networking engineer is a different story though.
The real reasons why there aren't enough programmers being churned out from private colleges and universities are simple:
1. Private colleges don't encourage students to study programming. Programming teachers cost a lot more and seeing as class-sizes are already smaller, private colleges simply prefer to focus on networking basics.
2. Universities should start by teaching JavaScript, not Java! Studying Computer Science is dreadfully boring for the first 3 - 4 semesters. It's also extremely difficult for the uninitiated. Especially when you're writing code in Java or C++ and you can't "see" what's going wrong and can't decipher cryptic error messages. It would be better to use JavaScript to teach students about for loops, if-then-else logic, simple functions etc. Students will have a lot more fun creating a 'cool' website they can show to the world than they would creating a command line Java app.
It doesn't help that most university teaching staff see Javascript, PHP, Ruby on Rails etc. as somehow 'inferior' to Java or C++.
The problem is not just getting students to study Computer Science, it's getting them to graduate with a CS major. In my first year at varsity, there were about 400 students 'majoring' in Computer Science. By year 3 it was closer to 100.
Considering the current world of web 2.0, universities should be spending more time on web languages and technologies, and less on teaching students to write stand-alone applications!
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The probable reason academics "see Javascript, PHP" as "inferior" languages is BECAUSE THEY **ARE** INFERIOR! They are fun to use, but the are really fundamentally terrible especially for large projects. The issue is that in schools they try and teach the fundamental issues that are good for all kinds of tasks, as opposed to just getting a job done fast. This leads to the boring stuff coming first. It's a real problem, but let's not get confused over the fact that PHP really does stink as a language.
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