Choosing a programming language as a competitive tool

[Tim Hammerquist]

Alex Martelli <aleaxit at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I do hope that nowhere is Perl used as the _only_ language in an
> _introductory_ CS course, but I wonder...
> 
> Maybe it depends on how many _other_ CS courses the typical
> student of that introductory course is expected to take over
> his or her academic career.  It may make a difference whether
> the introductory course is likely to be just the first of many CS
> courses, or, at the other extreme, pretty likely to be the only
> one, or one of two/three at most.

One of the local community colleges in my area uses VB in an introductory
CS course.  This was surprisingly difficult only in forcing myself to
keep pace with the dozens of other students who had never heard of an
'icon' or 'window.'

Following that were Intermediate and Advanced programming courses, both
involving C++, the latter of which got deep into OO concepts.  The
classes understandably got small within the first two weeks, having been
lulled into thinking åll the CS courses would be as simple and
hand-holding as the VB course.  =)

Python would have been a much better choice to teach beginning
programming.  Perl would even have been better than VB, though more
cryptic, I admit.  The instructor's rationale was that he wanted to the
students to see the immediate results of their actions, doing things
like placing digital photographs of themselves into windows titled with
their names.  This probably attracted the wrong audience of students for
the subsequent classes on more advanced programming concepts like
pointers, classes, virtual functions, etc.

Perl's not my first choice for introduction, but it's preferable to VB.

-- 
-Tim Hammerquist <timmy at cpan.org>

Not all who wander are lost.
	-- J.R.R. Tolkien