"LAMP" Education

[gspranger]

Hello fellow PHPers,

My name is Greg Spranger and I am the newly christened Assistant Professor of Information Science and Technology at Chadron State College (CSC) in Chadron, NE. I am writing you all today to share information concerning our new program/major at CSC – a comprehensive major in "Information Management Systems." It is a program designed to move away from the typical general ed. Computer Science degree, and give students a more focused degree on building business applications using tools such as Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Perl (i.e. LAMP engineers). Our goal is to provide career-oriented education, while still covering the theory and conceptual ideas that make Computer Science what it is. Basically, it’s the type of education I wish I received while working as a: (1) database programmer, (2) database administrator, (3) LAMP developer, etc.

Below is a sample listing of the courses offered:

Programming Concepts I (using Perl)
Programming Concepts II (using Perl)
Web Page Development (HTML, XHTML, CSS)
Human-Computer Interaction
Graphic Design I
Database Management
Web Server Administration (Linux, Apache, MySQL, etc.)
Web Programming (PHP,JavaScript)
Wireless Application Development (WML, voiceXML)
Dynamic Web Page Development (Web focus capstone course)

In class, we will focus on providing solutions, directly related, to the campus, community, region, and nation. For example, our "Dynamic Web Page Development" students are creating a "jobs" Web site for victims/survivors of hurricane Katrina (yatrina.elmo-ms.com) – obviously we have some work ahead of us:-)

Currently, we do not offer the major completely online, but hope soon to get there. If you may be interested, or know someone who might – please contact me at gspranger@csc.edu

Thank you, good luck, and please spread the word,

Greg Spranger

[vaaaska]

In the midst of all of that, you are offering 'Graphic Design I'? Perhaps it should really be called web-graphics...

Graphic design is a pursuit unto itself (or, it should realistically be dealt with as such).

[Sxooter]

Any chance you could throw in other databases and make sure the students learn to use a good abstraction layer when working on dbs? I find that people who only learn MySQL have a pretty stunted idea of what databases are and how to really use them.

Plus, if you taught PostgreSQL you could teach them stored procedures in a wonderful rainbow of languages, including PHP. Just wondering.

vaaaska. I can see that graphic design is a field unto it's own, but how about a class on good UI design, something most CS students seem sorely lacking nowadays. A good UI can be in green text on a monochrome screen, if it's thought out well. just like no amount of colors can save an angry fruit salad interface.

[csn]

+1 on using PostgreSQL instead of MySQL. The knowledge (and data!) will translate much better to other databases. PostgreSQL isn't any more difficult to get started with for beginners IMO, and it scales very well up into expert levels. MySQL will lend itself to learning and using bad and non-standard practices - sort of like learning programming with VB.

I also don't think Perl is a good choice for learning programming concepts. PHP5 would be somewhat better, and C#/Java even better. Perhaps even Ruby.

[dasil003]

I have to second the opinion about Perl being a poor first language. The reason is because there's too much magic there. Especially when you are offering a more career-oriented degree, there's a real danger of turning out the next generation of Perl kiddies who aren't able to adapt to new languages because they rely on too many advanced constructs.

I believe in the MIT way of starting kids off with Lisp. Right there you have unabridged programming concepts without any syntax getting in the way. You only need to do it for one semester, then they have the proper context to learn cool and practical languages like Perl, PHP, Java, etc.

[Weedpacket]

Agreement here re: PostgreSQL and Perl. PostgreSQL is a lot more solid and reliable (for those who want their DBMS to behave like a proper DBMS) than MySQL, and Perl is just too hairy to be a lucid platform for teaching programming concepts; trying to implement a tree you spend all your time trying to keep track of what context you're supposed to be accessing what variable (and is that by reference or by value?) and none on finding out what a tree does and how it works. I certainly wouldn't pick it to teach programming concepts. I'd sooner pick Javascript. Heck, I'd sooner pick Pascal (teaching programming concepts is what Pascal was invented for).

And what's with the distinction HTML and XHTML, when XHTML is just a modernised and simplified version of HTML?

[halojoy]

... PostgreSQL is a lot more solid and reliable
(for those who want their DBMS to behave like a proper DBMS)
than MySQL ...
...
And what's with the distinction HTML and XHTML,
when XHTML is just a modernised and simplified version of HTML?Thanks, Weedpacket
Always have suspected there was some database program
more solid than MySQL

and
Thanks again,
for answering something I have wondered about:
'What is this X in front of HTML doing?'


/halojoy, Sweden
with his own PHP Script Forum and LINUX Forum
http://213.100.118.115/bb

bb = bulletin board
( SQLite DB used! - goes very fast! compared to phpBB/MySQL )

'no MySQL if avoidable'
is halojoy motto
not only for the day, but forever

:cool: