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From: perry@leopard.UUCP (Perry S. Kivolowitz)
Newsgroups: net.cse
Subject: Re: pascal as an intro language
Message-ID: <156@leopard.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 21-Feb-86 15:59:15 EST
Article-I.D.: leopard.156
Posted: Fri Feb 21 15:59:15 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 24-Feb-86 06:21:46 EST
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I believe Pascal is a good first programming language. However, it has
been my experience that undergraduates trained only in Pascal have had
their imagination destroyed. 

I would suggest that Pascal be used as an introductory procedural lan-
guage to be replaced in the second year by C. To go one step further I
would replace C in the  third  year  of study with C++ to get students
used to the idea of  non-procedural languages (there can be an object-
oriented to C++ sources).

Overall, I'd like to less emphasis  on Pascal. It is a dry, uninspired
language suitable for use in introductory courses or very highly main-
tainable but non-the-less uninteresting applications.

I'd like  to  see  non-procedural  languages introduced. That's my big
wish if I had it to do all over  again.  It's real hard after 11 years
of procedural languages to break out of that mind set.

Perry S. Kivolowitz