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From: ark@ut-sally.UUCP (Arthur M. Keller)
Newsgroups: net.cse,net.lang.pascal,net.college
Subject: Re: pascal ass intro. language
Message-ID: <4346@ut-sally.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 1-Mar-86 04:14:35 EST
Article-I.D.: ut-sally.4346
Posted: Sat Mar  1 04:14:35 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 2-Mar-86 02:31:22 EST
References: <192@bu-cs.UUCP> <4253@ut-sally.UUCP> <497@looking.UUCP> <528@tekcbi.UUCP>
Reply-To: ark@sally.UUCP (Arthur M. Keller)
Organization: U. Texas CS Dept., Austin, Texas
Lines: 30
Xref: watmath net.cse:650 net.lang.pascal:502 net.college:1165

In article <528@tekcbi.UUCP> jimb@tekcbi.UUCP (Jim Boland) writes:
>If you are just passing through a course, will only program for 3 months and
>never do it again, Basic is probably sufficient.  

I suppose that if you are just passing through foreign language
literature course, will only read foreign literature for 3 months and
never do it again, foreign language newspapers are probably
sufficient.  I don't buy that.  If you are taking a 3 month course
and will never directly apply the knowledge, then learning concepts is
probably the most important because you will forget the details.  It is
easier to learn the concepts of programming (the basis for learning
Computer Science, but not *all* of CS) using Pascal as many are simply
not expressible in Basic.  (Don't bug me about Turing equivalence, and
I won't ask you to write a universal Turing machine in Basic.)

On the other hand, if you are teaching a "computer literacy" course,
that is, a primarily non-programming course, it may be worthwhile to
use Basic because the start up costs are low, programming is a minor
part of the course, and you are not attempting to teach programming
concepts but rather have the students write a few trivial programs.
Pascal is also a problem for students who have not yet mastered high
school algebra and who may be able to manage some simple Basic
programs.  Probably better to teach them Logo or Karel the Robot.

Arthur

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