Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bbn!uwmcsd1!ig!agate!ucbvax!hplabs!otter!esh
From: esh@otter.hple.hp.com (Sean Hayes)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Re: First Languages (yet again)
Message-ID: <2400006@otter.hple.hp.com>
Date: 5 Feb 88 13:52:28 GMT
References: <4022@ames.arpa>
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, Bristol, UK.
Lines: 20

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.

It should also be the goal of good educational establishments to promote
technologies that stand a good chance of being used in the future.
To that end I was taught C and UNIX when nobody in Industry wanted it, and
in fact I would contend that the reason Industry wants it now is because it
was taught to undergraduates who now make up the bulk of Industry.

(1/2 :-)
It is entirely reasonable to expose first years to declarative languages 
in their first year,
especially when most of them have been brain damaged by hacking in BASIC and
Assembler on their whizz-bang micros.
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|Sean Hayes,          Hewlett Packard Laboratories,      Bristol,  England|
|net: esh@hplb.uucp   esh%shayes@hplabs.HP.COM       ..!mcvax!ukc!hplb!esh|