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"