Roger Hayter wrote:
Jerry Stuckle wrote:

On 2/9/2016 12:52 AM, Brian Reay wrote:


Perfectly normal, at least in the UK, for students studying various courses
(certainly the sciences) to study a programming language (in my Uni days
Fortran). My wife certainly did, we were married while at Uni (still are of
course) and we often spent lunch times preparing 'punch cards' which were
the entry method for the Uni Fortran machines.




And I suppose you learned about exothermic reactions in a World History
class.

In the United States, computer languages are taught in Computer Science
courses, not Chemistry.

Well that's yet another difference. Until the great dumbing-down of
university courses in the UK in recent years,[1] first degrees tended
not to be modular, and the department of the primary subject arranged
lecturers in necessary ancillary subjects as part of the main course.

[1] which doesn't apply to all universities.

A stunningly inaccurate statement. It was possible to take different
modules in top rated Universities (from a selected list) to get a degree 40
years ago. Including Oxbridge.

It still is.

True, you couldn't mix, say, engineering and tourism but different modules
in engineering (for example) were perfectly normal.

Typically, the first year was fixed but after that you could specialise in,
say, digital electronics and computing or electrical engineering and
electronics.