[Edu-sig] Programmers missing

[David Reed]

On Jan 28, 2008, at 8:53 AM, Andre Roberge wrote:

> 2008/1/28 Jan Ulrich Hasecke <jan.ulrich at hasecke.com>:
>> Was it already posted here?
>>
>> http://www.stsc.hill.af.mil/CrossTalk/2008/01/0801DewarSchonberg.html
>>
>
> No, it was not posted (afaik).  Thanks for the link.
>
> I find it interesting that no attention seems to be given to the fact
> that a language like Python provides a "clean" and natural translation
> of algorithms - when one focus on explaining a certain algorithm and
> demonstrating its use, it would seem natural to avoid having to deal
> with syntactical obfuscation.
>
> Then again, given the authors professional attachment ("Adacore"), it
> is not entirely surprising that emphasis is given to Ada...
>
> André
>
>> juh


I ran across another article that quoted him recently (it was linked  
in the three times a week ACM news email earlier this month).

http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/career/article.php/3722876

While I agree with some of what he says, I don't think there is any  
harm in teaching a "simpler/higher level" language in the first course  
as long as students are exposed to lower level languages in other  
courses. We have found that Python is great for beginners and then we  
teach our students C++ in our two algorithms and data structures  
courses. This lets our students focus on problem solving in the first  
course w/o worrying about the more complex syntax of C++ (and we can  
write more interesting assignments in CS1 with Python). In the second  
course we then transition to C++ so students learn a lower level  
language and need to understand memory management. I think the  
combination of these two languages (one that provides rich data  
structures and does memory management and one that essentially  
requires you to write everything from scratch) gives students a great  
background no matter what language they will need to learn to use in  
their careers.

Dave

David M. Reed, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Computer Science
Capital University
dreed at capital.edu
http://capital2.capital.edu/faculty/dreed