pattis@cs.washington.edu (Richard Pattis) (12/07/90)
The Engineering College at the University of Washington plans to phase out its "Introduction to Programming in FORTRAN" class, and instead switch to a more "modern" language. We are considering various posibilities (and we plan to teach 1 week of FORTRAN at the end anyway). This class will be taken by every pre-engineering student. We are on the quarter system, so the course will last 10 weeks (4 hours/week). I don't want to start a language-wars flame fest, but I would like to ask one specific question: What experiences have instructors had teaching C in a completely introductory course to a wide range of students? I'm looking for the details associated with answers like "We tried switching to C and everything worked fine" or "We tried switching to C and ended up switching back". I will repost the mailings I get in a week or so; if you me mail that you don't want reposted, please tell me. Rich Pattis