Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!quintus!pds
From: pds@quintus.UUCP (Peter Schachte)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: First Languages (yet again)
Message-ID: <619@cresswell.quintus.UUCP>
Date: 3 Feb 88 18:48:40 GMT
References: <4022@ames.arpa> <2400002@otter.HP.COM> <932@its63b.ed.ac.uk> <2781@omepd>
Organization: Quintus Computer Systems, Mountain View, CA
Lines: 26
Summary: Four years is plenty of time to teach programming.  Why not
	 start off with simpler languages?

In article <2781@omepd>, pcm@iwarpo3.intel.com (Phil C. Miller) writes:
> Part of the reasoning behind a technical education should be to prepare
> a student for the working experience.  I contend that exposing
> first-year students to a functional programming language does not fit
> that role.

No, perhaps not (although the first language I learned in college was
Lisp, which was also the language I programmed in in my first job after
college).  Many, probably most, CS graduates will wind up programming
in C, or Ada, or FORTRAN, or assembler.  But this does not mean that
those languages have to be taught in first year college courses.  There
is plenty of time in a four year CS program to teach all the practical
tools.  It's more important to teach students concepts of algorithms and
data structures and correctness and documentation and structured design
than to teach individual programming languages.

Starting a first year student off with a language like C or FORTRAN or
Ada or assembler is like teaching an infant to swim by throwing him into
the ocean.  It may work, but the mortality rate seems a bit high.  Start
him off in calmer waters until he's strong enough to handle the ocean.
And while he's in calm waters, you can concentrate on teaching him
technique.
-- 
-Peter Schachte
pds@quintus.uucp
...!sun!quintus!pds