No actually, I would argue that it's better to simply start with the basic concepts of C and then get more complicated. Sorta-teaching kids a half dozen languages is meaningless, if our stated goal is to turn out competent IT people.

It's not exactly like C::Java as Integral Calculus::Algebra

Java is a complex monster all it's own, and half the complexity is because it tries to get cute with pass by references, garbage collection, and all manner of things that would only take a week of class time to teach a sufficiently curious individual.

With C, most of the complexity is in dealing with the limitations of the computer itself. It can only do one thing at a time. Memory is finite. If you allocated it, you have to free it.

(When you start getting into object systems, my argument is to ditch compiled options and layer on a scripting language like Python or TclOO that can better handle the Kama-Sutra like transformations abstract objects need to perform.)

Well, if you don't understand memory addressing... how do you understand programming to start with? It's so simple "I want a block of memory" is malloc(). I'm done with a block of memory is free(). A pointer points to a block of memory that was malloc()'ed.

I was 16 years old, reading a xerox copy of K&R's "The C Programming Language", and my only prior experience was BASIC. (Where the looping construct was "GOTO")

The problem is, kids aren't learning programming languages because they are fun. They are learning them in class, and under the gun. It takes years of playing with these concepts before they make sense. And we don't have the kinds of curriculum that stress "this is a multi-year discipline in which what you learn in year 1 forms the basis for year 2." Instead, we reward kids one correct answer at a time, and never mind that the 9 questions they got right were useless, and the one question they got wrong betrays a complete misunderstanding of the subject, it's an "A".

The problem isn't an engineering education. The problem is a complete an total lack of humanities while undertaking said education. Well, not total lack, but a general consideration that it's a pain in the ass and not required to get your job done.

I nary saw a history class, and the only "humanities" we were offered were labeled such. (I.E. a premade minimal class just to say were had it.)

You also have the problem in that Engineering degrees are so in demand, our engineering schools have become diploma mills. Self-contained enclaves. There was no effort on the part of my school to connect what we were learning to anything else. If anything the attitude was "Engineers were special", and everything (including basic math) had a "For engineers" in the title.

And not all religious people are terrorists.

/Yes I am an engineer, why do you ask?

Yes, but my list would be different than your list. And thus...

Heck, I worked at a museum that ended up spending 6 figures to wholesale replace their IBM System 36 accounting system with an AS/400. (Including having developers completely rewrite the RPG code...)

In 2001 we had several companies that wanted to donate System 36's to be museum displays. We ended up telling them that we already had 2 of our own!

KDE 4 is the reason all of my users boot into XCFE by default.

(Shudder)

And given that 9/11 happened in 2001, it'll be back to decades old in a two years...

And actually, the way the law is worded, my iPhone would be exempt. It's docked into a charger/fm transmitter station.

True, but that would require law enforcement actually out and patrolling. With a tickbox system, they can just sit on the shoulder with one eye on the Radar gun, and another on the lookout for those hooligans who ride in the HOV lane with a single rider.

I take it somebody has never had a bad day and found him or herself on the wrong side of the law.

What kind of "economy of scale" is there to throwing out working systems and replacing them?

Oh right... this is management types we are talking about...

Or Blur's "Song #2"

One minor knit to pick. The momentum doesn't double with a doubling of the speed of the reaction mass. It quadruples. Remember your high school physics: KE=0.5*m*v**2

If anything, it only reinforces your point.

Nuclear reactors don't have to be all that heavy. The Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft had plutonium power cells. You pretty much can scale nuclear power to whatever size and power you need. (We don't usually use small power plants simply because it's more cost effective to power devices other ways.)