Joel Spolsky, Snake-Oil Salesman
While some of this makes sense... this "Undergraduate courses lose their technical currency in something like five years on average" sticks out like a sore thumb.How well would we be served if C were taught in undergraduate programs? In depth. Add to that a Lisp and Java, and who knows what we would be capable of in a shorter timeframe? C and Java have not gone obsolete, and along with Lisp, many different paradigms of programming are taught. Not only that, but technical skill with important and oft-used languages would be transferred.I add Lisp simply to include another paradigm and because it's an old concept that's never really gone away, and seems to be gaining traction (see this site, see Clojure, see the continuing development and expansion of Scheme and CL and Gambit etc etc.)