[koomi]

I just started university and it's still all Java. I found out one university in my country (Germany) teaches Scheme in their introductory course, but sadly I had already enrolled at a different one at that time.

The high school CS curriculum here is also basically an introduction to Java.

[gurkendoktor]

I just looked up my old university's curriculum and it must be another university - our 'Programming 101' is half C, half Java now. I bet our students will never hear of recursion on campus anymore.

From what I heard as a student assistant, there were all sorts of reasons for dropping Scheme. First, professors have to use half of their time for research, and there isn't much useful research left in programming languages (given that the industry is decades behind that research, anyway). Second, many of our old professors started out in mathematics, unlike the new generation. Third, everything is being dumbed down. :(

At least my job is secure...

[Pitarou]

Such a shame.

I know why they do it: Java is the closest we have to an "industry standard" programming language. But, given the high failure rate in computer programming teaching (c.f. the FizzBuzz test) there's no excuse for putting beginners on such a steep learning curve.