Xref: utzoo comp.edu:2365 comp.lang.misc:3181 Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!purdue!haven!decuac!shlump.nac.dec.com!horsey.dec.com From: gentile@horsey.dec.com (Sam Gentile) Newsgroups: comp.edu,comp.lang.misc Subject: Re: Which language to teach first? Message-ID: <3876@shlump.nac.dec.com> Date: 31 Jul 89 20:08:20 GMT Sender: news@shlump.nac.dec.com Followup-To: comp.edu Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation Lines: 41 In article <13158@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU>, tka4092@athena.mit.edu (Terry Alkasab) writes... >In article <8514@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu> lacey@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu (John Lacey) writes: >>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. >> >>What say all of you? >> I have been a Software Engineer for 4 years now first in the DOD world at Raytheon and now working on network applications. I have written the majority of my code ( 90%) in C with the remainder being Raytheon assembly, MACRO-32, DCL and FORTRAN. The first language I was taught as a Computer Engineering student was FORTRAN and then I learned DEC MACRO-32. Allthough I love C and do most of my work in C, I don't think it is a good first language to learn for a student. I found C very difficult at first and I had a lot of problems with it. Also some C coders write code that is completely un-readable. I think BASIC should be abolished and certainly not taught as a first language. It gives people very bad first habits. I don't think FORTRAN is a good first language either. I think PASCAL is still the ideal first language for a student. It will expouse the student to the concepts of pointers in a more friendly way than C and teach structured programming habits. These are just my opinions on the subject. I would like to hear what other people have to say on the subject. Sam Gentile gentile%horsey.dec@decwrl.dec.com Software Engineer decwrl!horsey.dec.com!gentile Digital Equipment Corp Software Services Engineering - Network Engineering 5 Wentworth Drive GSF1-1/G13, Hudson NH 03051 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- DEC is Number ONE in Networking!!! ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- The views expressed are my totally my own and do not reflect the views of Digital Equipment Corp.