Eur Ing Christopher Thoday

Rugby, UK

Software Engineer

I have worked in IT since 1959 and see it as a vocation. I enjoy designing and constructing well engineered software and solving system administration problems.

It is many years since I had any involvement in education but looking through some books in a bookshop I was shocked to find how the exam system is so closely integrated with the products of one supplier that is clearly abusing its monopoly position. There was no sense in any of the text books that computing could be fun. Instead of coverage of free software there were lectures about not copying licenced software. A book with "New" in the title contained information about Fortran and Cobol and repeatedly stated that C++ was inefficient. There was no mention of any of the powerful scripting languages such as Python. It appears that the teaching of IT requires a total rethink.