Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!ames!zhukov!hil
From: hil@zhukov.ADS.COM (Hilarie Nickerson)
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: Re: beginning language--APL
Message-ID: <11506@zhukov.ADS.COM>
Date: 9 Apr 90 19:45:47 GMT
References: <4900002@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> <28729@cup.portal.com>
Distribution: usa
Organization: Advanced Decision Systems, Mt. View, CA (415) 960-7300
Lines: 32

In article <28729@cup.portal.com> Edward_M_Cherlin@cup.portal.com writes:
>The question was what should be the first language for CS and non-CS 
>students.  I run the U.S. half of a worldwide non-profit organization
>devoted to making APL the first language.  For non-CS students the
>rationale is that it is a math language which has been successfully 
>introduced in elementary school, and for CS the rationale is that it is
>a math and computer language suitable for math, science, computer design,
>data processing, graphics, music and more.  This argument has been made
>best by Prof. Alan Perlis, when be became chairman of the CS department
>at Yale and made APL the first language for CS there.

When I was at Yale (early 80's), intro CS courses were divided into
"learn a language" style courses for non-majors and "here's CS"
for prospective majors. Perlis taught the first prospective major
course using APL -- he expected students to master the language
pretty much on their own within the first three weeks of class.
His approach was designed to screen out people who weren't serious
about CS -- while I found APL easy, most other students found it
extremely difficult and about 2/3 of the students in the class eventually
dropped it. Students in the non-major class where the focus was on
learning APL did not experience the same difficulties.

I believe that the first class in CS should be about learning CS,
not about learning a language -- based on the above, APL is not
a good choice for such a class. I suspect that some people who
would have been good at CS were screened out by the use of APL
in the first class at Yale.

-- 
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Hilarie Nickerson          Advanced Decision Systems
hil@ads.com                Mountain View, CA