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From: bzs@bu-cs.UUCP (Barry Shein)
Newsgroups: net.lang.pascal,net.college
Subject: Re: pascal ass intro. language
Message-ID: <192@bu-cs.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 22-Feb-86 19:35:57 EST
Article-I.D.: bu-cs.192
Posted: Sat Feb 22 19:35:57 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 24-Feb-86 21:48:18 EST
Organization: Boston Univ Comp. Sci.
Lines: 44
Xref: linus net.lang.pascal:474 net.college:1100


>For a new (I think) idea in progressive teaching, how about using 3
>or 4 languages, and allowing students to use whichever one they feel
>most comfortable with (for projects and exam questions, etc.).
>
>Jeff Siegal - MIT EECS

Obviously you were expecting this...This has been done, I believe
Eliot Organick wrote a big CS textbook that was intended to be an
intro course book and was used at University of Utah. According to
a friend of mine who went there (quite a while ago! 10+ yrs) that is
exactly what the course was, topics were taught in the language
thought appropriate (I believe among the languages were fortran,
basic, snobol and lisp.)

I agree, an intro course should be a survey course. It should be shallow
and a good intro into 'the great ideas' of the field just like any intro
course in the sciences (bio, phys, chem etc). Some programming should be
taught as in any good intro lab course (laboratory practices and methods,
remember intro chem, bio...)

I have always thought it unfortunate that the emphasis here has been
(in the past anyhow, haven't kept up with the intro courses lately)
Programming in Pascal 101 rather than Computer Science 101 (also known
as "Shuffle the semi-colons till it stops complaining 101".)

Personally, I hate Pascal and consider it the scourge of computer science,
if I had to choose one language I would go with either C or Lisp. The
former because it is a traditional, ALGOL-like language which higher-ups
seem to like in an intro programming language (ie. just enough like Pascal
to sell the idea) and it doesn't have all the Pascal brain-damage (for starters
there are lots of big systems written in C, can't barely say the same for
Pascal, there's a reason for that, like strong typing for weak minds
philosophy.) I would go for LISP because it's easy to get into, a reasonable
interpreter works well with an editor, debugger and tracer. More of a lab
environment, less of a core-dump environment, there's plenty of time for
that later (tho on UNIX/4.2 dbx makes all this a bit better.) Lisp dialects
could be considered tho not sure why exactly except that Sussman et al's
book using Scheme has great potential to base a course on, and a good text
is a great place to start designing a course.

If only they would listen...oh well, I teach the C and UNIX/sys courses.

	-Barry Shein, Boston University