Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!att!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!wuarchive!texbell!uhnix1!sugar!ficc!peter From: peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc Subject: Re: Which language to teach first? Message-ID: <5702@ficc.uu.net> Date: 15 Aug 89 21:16:26 GMT References: <2552@aplcen.apl.jhu.edu> <6204@hubcap.clemson.edu> <5594@ficc.uu.net> <1501@shuksan.UUCP> Organization: Xenix Support, FICC Lines: 25 In article <1501@shuksan.UUCP>, scott@shuksan.UUCP (Scott Moody) writes: > Remember that the first language you are taught in CS101 is also the > main language you use throughout undergraduate education (outside of > the many languages course). That's not my experience. The intro course I skipped, but it was in Fortran. Then there were a couple of courses in Pascal, an assembly language course, and then mostly C with occasional forays back into Pascal and Fortran (for EE courses, mainly). This was some years ago, of course, but I would hope that things haven't narrowed *too* much since then. And if the intro course is too easy for a student, they should test out of it like I did. You can't assume that just because someone had a computer before they came to university they knew anything about programming. Sure, you can call the intro course a remedial course, but you're doing people a disservice. By the criterion you're applying most of the first- year courses fit that description, in any discipline... I know I was horrified by the stuff they were going over in first year Math and Physics. -- Peter da Silva, Xenix Support, Ferranti International Controls Corporation. Business: peter@ficc.uu.net, +1 713 274 5180. | "The sentence I am now Personal: peter@sugar.hackercorp.com. `-_-' | writing is the sentence Quote: Have you hugged your wolf today? 'U` | you are now reading"