[Tutor] New Introductory Book

Alan Gauld alan.gauld at btinternet.com
Thu Nov 8 23:19:59 CET 2007


"Chris Calloway" <cbc at unc.edu> wrote

> teach languages. Teaching languages is frowned upon in some computer
> science departments under the logic that if you belong in a computer
> science class, you'd better show up for class already knowing 
> something
> as easy to grasp as an implementation language.

I don't like CS courses to focus on a language either, but neither do 
I think
we should expect students to already know one. But learning a computer
language should be a trivial exercise once you understand the CS 
concepts
of algorithms and data and I/O etc.

One of the worst things I find as an employer is the number of CS
grads I get to interview who insist they only know one language. I 
wonder
what they learned at college. That's like an electronics engineer 
saying
he only knows how to solder, or a civil engineer who only knows how
to lay bricks! A CS course should concentrate on principles and
theory and learning languages should be a practical detail that the
student does almost by osmosis.

And this is, of course, why my tutorial teaches three languages
not just python ;-)

-- 
Alan Gauld
Author of the Learn to Program web site
http://www.freenetpages.co.uk/hp/alan.gauld





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