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From: brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton)
Newsgroups: net.cse,net.lang.pascal,net.college
Subject: Re: pascal ass intro. language
Message-ID: <497@looking.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 24-Feb-86 01:11:33 EST
Article-I.D.: looking.497
Posted: Mon Feb 24 01:11:33 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 26-Feb-86 06:45:40 EST
References: <192@bu-cs.UUCP> <4253@ut-sally.UUCP>
Reply-To: brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton)
Organization: Looking Glass Software Ltd. Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 26
Xref: linus net.cse:569 net.lang.pascal:481 net.college:1113
Summary: 

I hate Pascal as much as anybody who's had to implement one, but I will
second it as the choice for an introductory course.

Your audience in an introductory course is quite broad.  Some are going
on to further education in CS.  Others want something they can use.

If you give them fortran or cobol, you won't give much in the way of
CS concepts to those going on.  If you give them something unusual like
lisp, they will have trouble using their lisp skills in the real world.

You need something that's widely accepted, fairly standardized (at some level)
and that contains the basic concepts you want to deal with in a complete
degree program.

This leaves you with C and Pascal.  Pascal was designed for teaching, and
much of what is wrong with it is that people have forgotten this.
(Although I will never forgive writeln myself)

If you put Pascal in a nice interactive environment (like mine; plug, plug,
plug) this is your only choice.


This is not a statement to be proud of, necessarily.  Nonetheless, what is being
used in the real world does control what can be taught to some exent.
-- 
Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd. - Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473