Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!ut-sally!husc6!linus!encore!paradis From: paradis@encore.UUCP (Jim Paradis) Newsgroups: soc.college,comp.edu Subject: Re: First Language Taught in CSC degree track Message-ID: <1764@encore.UUCP> Date: Sun, 19-Jul-87 18:35:37 EDT Article-I.D.: encore.1764 Posted: Sun Jul 19 18:35:37 1987 Date-Received: Mon, 20-Jul-87 00:41:34 EDT References: <1472@super.upenn.edu.upenn.edu> Reply-To: paradis@encore.UUCP (Jim Paradis) Organization: Encore Computer Corp., Marlboro, MA Lines: 26 Xref: mnetor soc.college:771 comp.edu:510 In article <1472@super.upenn.edu.upenn.edu> Earl Shaffer writes: >Which language should be taught first in the Computer Science >track for incoming freshman? > >Remember, this is the course that will teach all the bad habits we >learned from our first language(s)! (happy face) For example, I >still use "I" for counters because I learned Fortran first. (yech!) Believe it or not, at MIT they teach Lisp in their intro-CS course! (6.001 for you techies out there). When I was a froshling they used a strange dialect called Ulisp that ran on a DEC-20. By the time I left they were using Scheme on HP micros, and I think they'll be doing that for a while. Anyway, one of the reasons that they did this was because a LOT of MIT CS majors already had played with computers before coming to MIT, and so were chock-full of bad habits from their various "first languages". By using a language unlike anything most anyone had seen before, they hoped to be able to start on a cleaner slate. Of course, that didn't prevent ME from speaking Lisp with a heavy Fortran accent for a while... but I got over it eventually. +----------------+ Jim Paradis linus--+ +--+-------------+ | Encore Computer Corp. necntc--| | | E N C O R E | | 257 Cedar Hill St. ihnp4--+-encore!paradis | +-------------+--+ Marlboro MA 01752 decvax--| +----------------+ (617) 460-0500 talcott--+ You don't honestly think ENCORE is responsible for this??!!