Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!husc6!bu-cs!buengc!art From: art@buengc.BU.EDU (A. R. Thompson) Newsgroups: comp.lang.pascal Subject: Re: Pascal dying out? Message-ID: <1161@buengc.BU.EDU> Date: 17 Oct 88 18:04:45 GMT References: <267@lafcol.UUCP> <641@bbking.KSP.Unisys.COM> Reply-To: art@buengc.bu.edu (A. R. Thompson) Followup-To: comp.lang.pascal Organization: Boston Univ. Col. of Eng. Lines: 19 In article lear@NET.BIO.NET (Eliot Lear) writes: >I do note that my own alma mater has been considering switching from >Pascal to LISP for their introductory CS courses. I don't know if >this typifies other universities. >-- Here at the College of Engineering we teach Pascal as the student's introduction to computation on the grounds that it provides a better basis for understanding the solution of problems than do languages that have too many machine dependencies and other vagaries. I have advocated (so far unsuccessfully) that our students should learn LISP as the second course in computing. Now we follow the introductory Pascal with a semester of numerical analysis using Pascal. This is important knowlege for engineers, I admit, but my rationale for following up Pascal with LISP is that the students will immediately learn a method of programming that is based on a different paradigm (functional vs Von Neumann). I relly think that the beginning students will benefit enormaously from this different view.