Yeah, the world really needs a load more developers with no idea how computers work. We don't see any of those in interviews already.
Aside: I'm not convinced that Python is a perfect first language either - its error messages are very unhelpful when you're learning. Also I think a "NAND to Tetris"-style curriculum could work, but C++ would still not be the first step for this.
Also, look at the second half of that sentence. This is not about "developers". If you're a business or physics student who's taking one elective programming course over a bachelor's degree would you be better served if that one course was in Python? Yes, absolutely.
There's also a risk you'll set students back if it's not effective so there are definitely ethical concerns and it requires interrupting a professor's load for the quarter. That said, CS educators conduct research like this all the time and there's probably a lot of value in studying this kind of change.
It really depends on the emphasis of an intro programming course. If the goal is to cover the basic control structures of a higher level language (conditionals, loops, switch statements, functions) and the fundamentals of object oriented programming, and get into some basic algorithms and data structures, then Python probably has less baggage and is more terse and expressive than something like C++.
For that reason I'm surprised by the lack of enthusiasm for just starting students in C.
By university, I imagine most students have already spent some time noodling around enough to understand some basic paradigms. C does not have the barrier that C++ has in that way. It's so much smaller, which is great, and no less useful. Soon after learning the basics a student may want to jump to something else, but then they'd be fully equipped.
Not that I'm against the Python approach— but for somebody looking for a deeper understanding C seems like a good choice since you can either drill down into memory management, or (as long as you don't do anything drastic) be somewhat lazy about it (with modern computers).
Python— I agree with many people in the thread—is very suitable for non-majors or a more applied approach. I am consistently trying to encourage non-programmer friends, family, others to take a stab at it because of the increase in productivity or ability it gives them with their machine they use on a daily basis.
... To the other questions— how much do you really need to know to be considered a CS? Surely you could pare it down to theoretical physics if you wanted to and eventually end at some unanswered questions somewhere between electron behaviour and quantum physics, no? Then you're a computer scientist.
Kidding aside and perhaps off topic—but much of the discussion in this thread causes me to wonder why so many interviews surround the ability to re-implement common (stdlib) algorithms, or on the web-side polyfills for existing language features, rather than understand some basics about how memory works from a programming perspective.
[0] https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2445248, https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2255982
That said, there is definitely something to be said for learning a lower-level language fairly early on I think. It's much easier to go from worrying about pointers vs values, manual memory management etc to not having to think about them than it is the other way round.
Its literally impossible to have any clue about performance without understanding the hardware. Sure you can profile and gain 5-10% after micro-optimizing what the profiler tells you.
But you will never, ever get the 200-1000% performance gains you can only get by accounting for the hardware at the very architecture level, something you can't fix by just profiling later on.
What even is the point of having programming classes if alls they do is teach what you can learn yourself with an online tutorial?
The only "low-level" detail from lower level systems course I find that is still relevant on a daily basis is cache-alignment - which I doubt they would cover in a 101 course anyways. Almost everything else either 1. the compiler does better or 2. you'd have to know how to fight the compiler to achieve.
Anything that would let you achieve 200-1000% performance gains in Python vs C++ (besides, again cache alignment) is likely not something you would cover in a intro level course. (I know C++ is faster Python, but that has nothing to do with "accounting for the hardware at the very architecture level")
Well, you can learn everything covered by even the most exhaustive CS degree by yourself using open resources. Low level knowledge is not locked away in some ivory tower. You certainly don't have to join a modern priesthood to gain access to high quality learning material, no matter how much the priests tell you otherwise :)
I've been reading that book, too, and agree with the sentiment
Really the only people I see might be machine level understand are 3D engine developers and high speed stock traders. VERY few other people need to understand how you need to organize your collections so that they are brought over in the correct page size from the L3 to L2 cache.
From what I have seen many programmers have no clue as to when to optimize something. They want to optimize everything which is a huge waste of time.
As for programming classes, they are pointless in modern society but most(ALL?) companies still like to see that you have jumped through the hoops correctly. And that you can be trained correctly to "Be a good team member".
I was studying assembly in the second year. What is the problem? It was really easy because in my early years I was writing 64k demos.
> or learning the basics of transistors, capacitors, signals etc.
It's the simplest part of all computer architecture. I think I can explain what is D flip-flop/transistors in one hour.
> Why does C++ have the "right amount" of abstraction, when it sweeps under the rug a vast body of physics and EE?
C++ has OOP, has a smart and raw pointers, STL(not the best, but better than C). Right now I'm working on a project where I need process more than 50Gb in 10 minutes. Python script uses 110Gb of RAM because there are no pointers. I don't know why the previous developer chose Python for this tool.
Knowing more and deeper information is usually a good thing, but students don't need to learn it all at an introductory level which I think this article is focusing on.
Most applications aren't written on the machine level, nor do they have the complexity that requires machine level knowledge. Embedded systems programming is, at this point, a separate disciple than generic software engineering.
The only regular exception I see to this is the poor curriculum around most Java oriented BS programs. I've seen many candidates come from a Java focused school that couldn't even write their own code without a full hand-holding IDE.
Tl;dr: agreed that low level computing fundamentals are helpful to every developer, disagreed that intro classes are the right place for them.