Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!att!cbnewsc!nevin1
From: nevin1@cbnewsc.ATT.COM (nevin.j.liber)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Which language to teach first?
Message-ID: <2633@cbnewsc.ATT.COM>
Date: 23 Aug 89 00:40:27 GMT
References: <1501@shuksan.UUCP>
Reply-To: nevin1@ihlpb.ATT.COM (nevin.j.liber)
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 54

In article <1501@shuksan.UUCP> scott@shuksan.UUCP (Scott Moody) writes:
>Remember that the first language you are taught in CS101 is also the 
>main language you use throughout undergraduate education (outside of
>the many languages course).

This bothers me.  Why should the first language you learn be your
primary language throughout college?  Doesn't sound like a well-rounded
CS education to me!  By using different languages, one learns different
ways of thinking about their programming problems.  Sampling half a
dozen languages in a single semester (the many languages course you
refer to) is not enough!  A semester in Scheme, the next in Pascal, the
next in Smalltalk, etc., would be a better curriculum.  You need to
write non-trivial programs in a language for a reasonable amount of time
(two weeks in the many language course is NOT reasonable) in order to
learn the language and the programming paradigm it presents.  If you
only use one language, you tend to get a very narrow view of
computing.

As for me, I was lucky; throughout my undergrad education, I never used
a single language for more than a semester.  But if I could have chosen
a primary language, it would have not have been Pascal or Ada or C; it
would have been Icon.  <plug time :-)>  I can express in tens of lines
of Icon what it takes in hundreds to thousands of lines in Pascal.
Since all the basic data structures (list, set, string, queue, etc.)
are built in, I can concentrate on the more important parts of the
programming assignment.  At college, where time is the most critical
constraint, this is very important.

>There are a lot of jobs in industry
>that need Ada programmers and it is still the job of the Universites
>to teach/prepare its students for the real-world.

There are also a lot of jobs in industry that need C programmers, C++
programmers, assembly language programmers, etc.   Should universities
ignore this?  I would rather work with someone who knew a variety of
languages and could tell me what language would be best for the
application at hand than someone who said to use Ada 'cause that's all
he knows!

>Try explaining to you future employer that you were
>taught to 'learn' other languages easially when they are looking
>for expert Ada programmers.

I have done just that (well, they were looking for expert C
programmers, anyway).  Guess what?  I got the job!

If Company-X is only looking for Language-Y programmers, Company-X is
being very short-sighted (ex:  there is a project being written in
Language-Y which is behind schedule).  I rather work at a place where
they hire you because of how-you-think rather than what-you-know.  As
long as you have the rest of the talent, another programming language
can always be learned.
-- 
NEVIN ":-)" LIBER  AT&T Bell Laboratories  nevin1@ihlpb.ATT.COM  (312) 979-4751