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From: elg@killer.UUCP (Eric Green)
Newsgroups: soc.college,comp.edu
Subject: Re: First Language Taught in CSC degree track
Message-ID: <1150@killer.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 18-Jul-87 01:15:39 EDT
Article-I.D.: killer.1150
Posted: Sat Jul 18 01:15:39 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 19-Jul-87 08:49:12 EDT
References: <1472@super.upenn.edu.upenn.edu>
Organization: Bayou Telecommunications
Lines: 38
Xref: mnetor soc.college:770 comp.edu:508

in article <1472@super.upenn.edu.upenn.edu>, shaffer@operations.dccs.upenn.edu (Earl Shaffer) says:
> Xref: killer soc.college:939 comp.edu:480
> 
> I have a questions which should stir up a debate.
> 
> Which language should be taught first in the Computer Science
> track for incoming freshman?

Scheme, of course! With _Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs_
out there, why bother with squashing semi-colons in Pascal, fer chrissakes? I
spent most of my freshman year hitting errors like these:

  procedure barf (j:array[1..20] of char);
....
  if x > y and y < z then
     begin
        ...
     end;
  else
.....

Whoobay. I can think of funner things to do! Was almost a relief to learn PL/1
-- just put a semicolon at the end of each line, and it's happy as a lamb
(note that this was before Unix and "C" became popular).  As for learning "C"
as the first language... "C" has a fairly complex syntax, too.  For example,
if a freshsman first sees

  for(i=0;i