h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

 I just wrote my computer final exam today and got royally ripped off. Why must first year students endure such pain and loss
of hair over the manditory learning of ancient programing languages? When you look at the advancements in the world of computer
languages, it seems that a new language pops up every couple months, and we have to learn Pascal--one of the most
ridiculus programing languages I've ever seen?????? Frankly I don't give a hairy rats' *** about how to build your own
stupid program to sort some bunch of numbers, and I have no intention of pursuing a career in this field so why,WHY must
I pay hundreds of borrowed dollars to fail a useless course!

I am in total agreement with your comments. I mean, being a computing student myself, I was forced to learn such archaic and useless languages such as Modula-2 and the even more dreaded COBOL. I mean, with the latest versions of Java, and Visual Basic and the like, why do the academics, still instist on teaching this rubbish. Surely the only viable reason, is the fact that they spent years using it, and therefore know a little bit about it, rather than actually trying to keep up with the times, and learn a new one.

That's right, oh digital ones, sons and daughters of Microsoft. Abandon the old ways for they are inefficient. The ten thousand year history of civilised man and the three million years of peace before that were just a painfully slow evolution towards the age of Bill. And now that His age is upon us, you only need to act on His stage.

OK, I'll stop babbling. At the risk of getting serious, what would you rather waste your time and hundreds of borrowed dollars on? Or with my teacher hat on: how would you sell this course to a disgruntled first year student complaining about having to program in sanskrit? I'm not trying to beat up on you (and if I were you, I'd probably be getting ready to flame me) but I can't see why you'd choose a course you didn't want to do for a career you don't want to work in! Maybe I'm just being incredibly thick.

I somehow ended up on this page after doing a search for Coco Pops.
Ironically the aforementioned Coco Pops turned up in my cupboard rendering the entire search useless.

I'll get my coat.

MMMM cooc pops, but back to the subject. I believe they teach you the basics so you can understand what is happening in the program. Why must you learn archaic greek letters before you write code? Well it would be darn hard to type if you did not know what a "p" is.