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From: lacey@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu (John Lacey)
Newsgroups: comp.edu,comp.lang.misc
Subject: Which language to teach first?
Message-ID: <8514@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu>
Date: 28 Jul 89 18:49:13 GMT
Reply-To: lacey@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu (John Lacey)
Organization: Cornell Theory Center, Cornell University, Ithaca NY
Lines: 32

My school is currently using an old VAX (11/750) and VAX Pascal in its
CS courses.  In the last 2 years, one of the professors (the best one
:-) ) has offered a course using Abelson & Sussman^2 as the text, with
TI's PC Scheme on 8088/MS-DOS machines.  This course, however, is offered
as an upper level elective.

At this years SIGCSE course, there was a talk about using Lisp, and in
particular Scheme, as a first programming language, that is, in the 
CS1 and CS2 courses.

I am a senior; a member of the university's computer policy committee,
chair of the student math/cs board, and founder of the TeX Users Group.
The math/cs board, together with the department faculty, is looking at
replacing Pascal (and perhaps the VAX) as the main programming language.
I would be interested in hearing from everyone about what they think of
such a move, and what language they feel is the best to use.

My own predjudices are to use Scheme.  Another choice, considerably more
conservative, would be Modula/2 or Oberon.  Ada, to my own taste, is 
completely out of the picture.

What say all of you?

P.S.   What about comp.lang.paradigms?   I would be very interested in a
discussion about the usefulness of particular paradigms, especially as 
related to their effectiveness as teaching instruments. (Professionals
are usually adept enough to fit the correct (or one of the better) paradigms
(and a particular language associated with it) to the job at hand.)

-- 
John Lacey                      |     cornell!batcomputer!lacey
lacey@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu    |     lacey@crnlthry.bitnet