Re: Why one school changed from Pascal to C++

[Farshad Nayeri <farshad@cmass.com>]

Keeping to the topic of "Why one School Switched 
from Pascal to C++", I'd like to point people to 
an alternative perspective presented in an
article Spencer Allain and I wrote based on 
a survey of some of the schools which taught 
Modula-3 in their CS curriculum.

The article, "Teaching Computer Science with 
Modula-3" is included in the second issue of 
the Threads Newsletter:

      http://www.cmass.com/threads/2/#academia

I suggest you take a look at this; M3 has worked
out pretty well in the past few years for those
who have taugt it. (Perhaps some instructors
will be willing to elaborate on USENET, but it is
near the end of the term and they are busy.) Indeed, 
I found a comment by one instructor quite impressive:

> "Last year we had a programming project course 
>  where we recommended the students to use Modula-3, 
>  but some project groups chose to use C++ or Borland 
>  Pascal. Most of the groups using Modula-3 did 
>  complete the course in time, while many of the 
>  others did not: 
> 
>      Modula-3:       85% in time (22 of 26)
>      Borland Pascal: 67% in time (2 of 3) 
>      C++:             0% in time (0 of 4)
> 
>  We found the top advantages of Modula-3 to be: its 
>  similarity to but without the shortcomings of Pascal, 
>  its support for modularization, garbage collection 
>  and the standard library." 

See the article for more elaboration, including
a list of some of the academic resources available 
for Modula-3. 

Best Regards, -- Farshad

-- 
Farshad Nayeri           farshad@cmass.com
Critical Mass, Inc.      http://www.cmass.com
Cambridge, USA           +1 617 354 6277

P.S., I shouldn't have to say this, but as 
with any publication, the article presents authors' 
bias, and its conclusions are open to interpretation!

P.P.S., I have tried again to add comp.edu to the discussion,
which I believe has a charter for such discussions.
Though this is my last attempt!