-- Kirby, WhitePages.com
Oregon State CS Alumni, class of 1996
As for learning Perl in school, my college never taught Perl. I got a good grounding in Java and C. I took an optional Theory of Languages class, where we learned a little bit about Prolog, Scheme, Python, and Pizza (an enhanced Java). But even this specialized class only mentioned Perl once. The Professor said he didn't like it as much as Python, and that was that :P.
All that said, I'm really glad that I did not learn Perl formally. Learning the basics of coding and using Perl as your first language could make learning to code in a much more rigid language really painful. Learn pointers in C, and Perl references become a piece of cake. I think it's a lot more difficult to go from references to pointers though. All my past experience has taught me how much easier Perl is for most tasks than many other languages. It has also given me the wisdom to know when not to use Perl, and the ability to pull out Java, C, or any other language when appropriate.
Also, based on how my college approached teaching Java, I don't think I'd enjoy a Perl class. They'd probably pick some silly Perl textbook, and have the teachers rigidly follow its structure. The teachers probably would have very little practical experience in Perl, but even if they did, they would have to follow the curriculum or the students in their section would be at a disadvantage for the standard multiple-choice quizzes given to all sections. They likely would not teach about the Perl community, or CPAN. All in all, the language I learned probably would have been very different from the language I stumbled upon while self-teaching myself CGI.
I don't really know of any specifically Perl-friendly colleges, though the homework questions posted here suggests there are some around.
Frankly, your question seems a little strange -- you don't mention anything about their ages, or that they're actually interested in computer engineering, or where you'd be willing to send them geographically (I take it California's okay, but what if I referred you to a college in South Carolina, for example?). Forgive me for saying, but you should probably encourage them to do their own college targeting (but make sure they're doing it). It'll make them more self-reliant.
Sorry I can't be more helpful.
Of course, by the time your kids are there, if not now, they will probably be more heavily into teaching, yuck, Java.
Am I the only person who is still waiting for Java to deliver what it promised when it was vaporware? Java and XML, bleah.
A good grounding in C is possibly the best introduction to Perl I can think of, especially pointer concepts as Perl data structures are largely pointers to pointers to pointers to things..
One doesn't really go to college/university to become practical.. indeed if someone enters the workforce after university with any useful skills you'd have to ask yourself "what did they study??".
Perl is a pragmatic language, a bit like a hammer drill is very useful during construction. But the point of college (e.g. a civil engineering degree) is to learn how buildings stay up, not how to use a hammer drill..
So it is with software, if your boys can learn the concepts of programming and the science behind it (and various arts) then they will be much better grounded for adapting to Perl and other languages as need be.
I found though that the course in college that really, profoundly, changed my programming approach was a course in state machines and finite automata (with a nice segueway into regular expressions, of course) - these being the absolute foundations and primordial soup of computer science, I suppose this is natural, don't overlook this significance. Ensure that they recieve these lessons.
It's not what you look like, when you're doin' what youre doin'.
It's what youre doin' when youre doin' what you look like youre doin'!
- Charles Wright & the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band
Tangentially related, I happened to come across this blog post bemoaning the ascendency of Java in CS teaching. Back in my day the introductory stuff was all Pascal, and then usually C in later courses (save things like the survey of languages classes, or the AI classes). I don't think there were any specific courses on Perl (or things like shell or awk for that matter). Pretty much something you picked up on your own as needed.
(And it's "Perl" not PERL.)
Ironically, I chose the Intro Java class over the Intro Perl class. Mainly because of the hype that Java was surrounded by back then and my lack of knowledge of computers, much less programming languages.
I have since seen the light. :)
I took mine at Canada College in Redwood City, CA, but I haven't looked lately to see if they still offer them though. And do remember that if your area is like mine, there is more than one CC in your area so check around.
HTH!
Ahhh, but do you expect them to understanding computing as a discipline in general prior to attending?
I will be handing my son a math book when I reach this point in his tender life as well as some of the proceedings from the ACM.
My favorite professor used to say something like this: In the future, all of the simple problems are going to be solved, which will leave you, by the time you graduate, with only the hard ones. If you don't study this (this being using recurrence relations to define recursive functions), will you be prepared?
Celebrate Intellectual Diversity
I view Perl as a tool —a very nice tool —but a tool. Chosing a college because their CS department is Perl friendly (does this mean they won't flunk you for using Perl? Or that they actually teach Perl?) seems a bit of a misplaced priority. What I would look for is a CS department which isn't run by programming language bigots ("language X is horrid because it doesn't have the left-handed ternary tree data type and only a fool would use it") and has good faculty teaching undergrads, good potential for networking (of the human kind), and a fairly rigorous (in technical, not just workload, terms) curriculum.
I've one offspring in college (sophomore) and one in high school (also sophomore). I'm also very glad I live in the Northeast; it's not hard to find quite a few world class schools within a 3 hour drive.emc
" When in doubt, use brute force." — Ken ThompsonI'm not really a human, but I play one on earth. flash japh