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From: rcd@opus.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.lang
Subject: Re: Discouraging "GOTO"s in introductory computer courses
Message-ID: <521@opus.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 25-May-84 02:31:07 EDT
Article-I.D.: opus.521
Posted: Fri May 25 02:31:07 1984
Date-Received: Mon, 28-May-84 05:44:24 EDT
References: <820@sdcsvax.UUCP>
Organization: NBI, Boulder
Lines: 27

How well you can avoid taching about GOTOs depends a lot on what language
you're teaching.  I've taught intro with Pascal, and I was able to defer it
for about 2/3 of the course, but only with careful choice of examples and
problems.  Pascal is weak in two areas:  It lacks any sort of loop exit,
and it doesn't have McCarthy (short-circuit) conditionals.  Lack of
procedure exit is also a problem that begets GOTOs, but that's not as
serious in an intro course.

Two points which you need to understand about teaching intro, as compared
to doing real programming:
	- you've got to deal with (and hopefully try to repair) brain
	  damage caused by exposure to BASIC.  An increasing number of
	  incoming college students are learning to code without learning
	  anything much about programming.
	- when teaching, you can afford to (and often must) take a position
	  more dogmatic than you really believe.  The idea is that if you
	  take a position two standard deviations out, you may get your
	  students out one S.D. in the right direction.

Would it have been better to teach C (assuming other circumstances had been
equally favorable to C and Pascal)?  I think not.  C is ok for an
experienced programmer; it's fine for an assembly-language hacker (taken in
the non-pejorative sense) who's in a hurry; it lacks the constraints I
think are needed to guide a novice.
-- 
...Stop to smell the flowers.				Dick Dunn
{hao,ucbvax,allegra}!nbires!rcd				(303) 444-5710 x3086