Microsoft to Help Higher Education (As Long As You Use Microsoft Software)

The action of the University of Waterloo as reported in this story seems to be a quid pro quo. The college has strenuously denied that their selection of the C# programming language for their required undergrad course was conditioned by Microsoft's grant. However, there are many at the college who are claiming that the topic of changing the programming language in the introductory courses never came up before the gift from Microsoft was announced.

Any language with the financial muscle of Microsoft behind it is bound to have some impact on software development so it's not completely unreasonable for the college to change the curriculum to teach C# to their incoming Electrical and Computer Engineering students. However, the timing of the change does seem more than coincidental in this case.

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Will Anyone Be Able To Read This In 10 Years?
How will we insure that we are still able to read Microsoft Word documents 100 years from now?  When one considers that we're still able to read the Rosetta Stone (a 2200 year old document) but we may not be able to read MS Word documents in 10 years, it's astounding in a way.  An interesting article (originally published in Scientific American) concerning the issues raised by digital longevity.
2:09:45 PM  #  
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