From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: * X-Spam-Status: No, score=1.4 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_50,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: fc89c,97188312486d4578 X-Google-Attributes: gidfc89c,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,97188312486d4578 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: 1014db,6154de2e240de72a X-Google-Attributes: gid1014db,public X-Google-Thread: 10db24,2243248c6a74be5 X-Google-Attributes: gid10db24,public X-Google-Thread: 109fba,baaf5f793d03d420 X-Google-Attributes: gid109fba,public From: jtbell@presby.edu (Jon Bell) Subject: Re: Should I learn C or Pascal? Date: 1996/07/24 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 169857665 references: <4t49om$ebi@epx.cis.umn.edu> organization: Presbyterian College, Clinton, South Carolina USA followup-to: comp.edu newsgroups: comp.lang.c,comp.lang.c++,comp.unix.programmer,comp.lang.ada,comp.edu Date: 1996-07-24T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: [followups set to comp.edu, which is where this discussion really belongs] Andrew J Steinbach wrote: > Why is it wrong to teach students basic >algorithms and data structures using a language which they probably >already know? Most intro CSci students aren't programming virgins (well, >at least the ones I know). Believe it or not, many prospective CS majors do *not* have significant programming experience when they arrive at college/university. This varies from school to school, of course. Here, it is unusual for a student in my CS1/CS2 courses to have *any* real programming experience. Our situation isn't really relevant because we don't offer a CS major (just a minor); nevertheless, I have seen comments from people at larger schools with CS degree programs that a significant number of their prospective majors are programming "virgins" or almost so. Also, the ones that *do* have programming experience haven't all been using the same language. One reason for using a "different" programming language like Scheme is that it tends to "level the playing field" for students in the course. Many factors go into the choice of an introductory programming language. Different schools weigh those factors differently. In our case, since we offer only a minor, we don't have *time* to start with one language, then switch to another; so we use C++ for CS1/CS2. Actually, we also have a "CS0" course which is mostly descriptive, but has a bit of programming in the HyperTalk scripting language, and practically all our CS minors take that first. -- Jon Bell Presbyterian College Dept. of Physics and Computer Science Clinton, South Carolina USA