Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!iuvax!mailrus!cornell!batcomputer!lacey
From: lacey@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu (John Lacey)
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: Re: Which language to teach first?
Message-ID: <8598@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu>
Date: 10 Aug 89 00:08:41 GMT
References: <8514@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu> <207100002@s.cs.uiuc.edu>
Reply-To: lacey@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu (John Lacey)
Organization: Cornell Theory Center, Cornell University, Ithaca NY
Lines: 53

In article <207100002@s.cs.uiuc.edu>  (2609 of comp.edu)
    mccaugh@s.cs.uiuc.edu writes:
} For anyone interested in keeping tally, of the preceding 24 responses to
} this note, PASCAL was the clear winner, with ML faring the worst.

Well, I have been very interested and I have also been privy to many direct
E-mail responses (being the one who asked the question), and in 75 responses
I show a much different pattern.  The earlier responses are, in general,
more coherent (I prefer x, yah, yah, yah), whereas the more recent posting
have degenerated into my-language-is-better-than-yours arguments.

However, of those expressing a clear preference, in both the comp.edu and
comp.lang.misc newsgroups (oh, do I wish I had used follow-up), and in
personal mail messages there are a total of 41, broken down as follows:

    Pascal    13
    Scheme    12
    Modula-2   4
    Ada        3
    ML         3
    Eiffel     2
    Prolog     2
    AWK        1
    Turing     1

In addition, at least 2 of those voting (?) for Pascal explicitly mentioned
features not in standard Pascal, but which are among the major additional
features of Modula-2 (it's closest relative), among these are separately
compilable modules, open and dynamic arrays, and strong type checking (e.g.,
between enumerated types).

So, I have to disagree with both ends of the previous posting.  Pascal was
not a clear winner, nor did ML fare at all badly.

Also, several languages were mentioned, either as runner-ups or simply
as interesting possibilities.  Modula-2 (runner-up to Pascal) was the 
most common of these.  Also, Emacs Lisp was mentioned by several people,
as was CLU, and also SmallTalk.

I would like to thank everyone for their contribution.

There real conclusion I have reached from all of the responses has been
that these numbers, and the particular languages especially, are not
and should not be the focus.  I still intend to post a what-I-learned
message, probably in the next couple of days.

Cheers,

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

After August 16:  jjlacey@owucomcn.bitnet
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