render@cs.uiuc.edu (Hal Render) (11/02/90)
Hi,
I'm putting together a survey to find out what programming languages are now
taught in introductory Computer Science classes at the undergraduate level.
If you teach an intro programming or data structures course or if you have
taken such a course in the last three years, I'd greatly appreciate it if you
could take a few moments to answer the following questions and *e-mail* your
responses to me at one of the addresses given below. I will post a summary
to the net. Thanks in advance for your help.
hal render
render@cs.uiuc.edu
render@zeppo.colorado.edu
----
Survey Questions:
1) Are you a student, a professional programmer, or an instructor?
2) What programming language do (did) you use in your introductory
programming and data structures courses?
3) Do you feel that the language is a good one for this purpose?
4) What other language (if any) would you prefer?
----jncs@uno.edu (11/02/90)
In article <1990Nov1.183157.6740@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>, render@cs.uiuc.edu (Hal Render) writes: >Hi, > >I'm putting together a survey to find out what programming languages are now >taught in introductory Computer Science classes at the undergraduate level. >If you teach an intro programming or data structures course or if you have >taken such a course in the last three years, I'd greatly appreciate it if you >could take a few moments to answer the following questions and *e-mail* your >responses to me at one of the addresses given below. I will post a summary >to the net. Thanks in advance for your help. > >hal render >render@cs.uiuc.edu >render@zeppo.colorado.edu > >---- > >Survey Questions: > > 1) Are you a student, a professional programmer, or an instructor? > Associate Professor. Computer Science Department. University of New Orleans. 2) What programming language do (did) you use in your introductory > programming and data structures courses? Ada for computer science majors since fall/1984 Pascal for Liberal Arts majors FORTRAN for Engineering majors > 3) Do you feel that the language is a good one for this purpose? Ada is very good for teaching purposes. It was hard to get started teaching it. But now, we have enough support material that eases the teaching task. > 4) What other language (if any) would you prefer? Probably a functional programming language such as Miranda. Functional languages have a rather trim syntax and semantics and are very powerful and excellent examples to teach principles of programming. ----
render@cs.uiuc.edu (Hal Render) (11/03/90)
I would like to thank everyone who has responded to my survey so far. If you haven't, please take a moment to do so and *e-mail* (not post) your responses to me. I promise to post a summary. Also, George Mitchell at MITRE mentioned that there was a survey similar to mine carried out sometime within the last year. If anyone remembers this survey and knows where I might find the results or who I might contact to find them, I would greatly appreciate an e-mail message concerning this. Thanks very much. hal render render@cs.uiuc.edu render@zeppo.colorado.edu
render@cassius.cs.uiuc.edu (Hal Render) (11/16/90)
Here are the numeric results of the survey I posted a few weeks ago. I have tried to tally the responses as accurately as possible. I will post a selected collection of comments from the responses in a week or two. They make interesting reading. If anyone wishes to see the complete responses, send me e-mail and I I will send you copies. My thanks to everyone who participated. hal render render@zeppo.colorado.edu ----------------------------------------------------------------------- > Survey Questions: > > 1) Are you a student, a professional programmer, or an instructor? > 2) What programming language do (did) you use in your introductory > programming and data structures courses? > 3) Do you feel that the language is a good one for this purpose? > 4) What other language (if any) would you prefer? 1) Total number of respondents: 63 2) Number of respondents by country: USA 43 Canada 6 Australia 5 Finland 2 Germany 2 UK 2 Austria 1 Israel 1 Sweden 1 3) Number of respondents by position: instructors 38 students 16 professionals 9 4) Number of programming languages used in intro programming and data structure courses [1]: Pascal 37 [2] Modula-2 9 [3] Ada 5 Scheme 4 C 3 Miranda 2 ML 2 Turing 1 LISP 1 FORTRAN 1 C++ 1 APL 1 ALGOL 1 [4] [1] a) Some respondents discussed more than one language. In the cases where one language seemed to dominate their comments, I counted only this one. Otherwise I counted all of languages discussed. This is why the language count totals more than 63. b) In some cases respondents distinguished between courses taught for CS or LAS students and courses taught strictly for engineers. In thoses cases, I counted only the courses taught for CS or LAS students. In most cases where a course strictly for engineers was taught, the language used was FORTRAN. c) In a few cases students mentioned past intro courses versus recent intro courses. In those cases I counted only the recent courses. [2] a) 4 of the respondents specifically mentioned Turbo Pascal. b) 5 of the 37 were from respondents who were referring to courses from a college or university already counted. Subtract these 5 from consideration if desired. [3] a) 1 of these is refers to a course already counted. See [2]. [4] a) Respondent used the language in a course taken in 1977. 5) Count of positive/neutral/negative recommendations for each language used: Pascal 20/9/4 [5] TurboPascal 2/1/1 Modula-2 5/2/2 [5] Ada 4/1/0 Scheme 3/0/1 C 2/0/1 Miranda 2/0/0 ML 2/0/0 Turing 1/0/0 LISP 1/0/0 FORTRAN 0/0/1 C++ 1/0/0 APL 1/0/0 ALGOL 0/1/0 [5] a) All recommendations were counted including those from respondents referring to the same courses. 6) Count of other languages preferred for intro programming course [6]: none 19 Modula-2 6 Modula-2 possibly 4 C++ 4 some OO C 1 C 4 C possibly 1 Scheme 4 ML 3 ML possibly 1 Ada 3 some OOPL 3 LISP 2 some OO Pascal 2 Smalltalk 2 Ada9X 1 Ada subset 1 Ada possibly 1 APL 1 Miranda 1 Modula-3 1 Logo 1 Eiffel 1 Eiffel possibly 1 TurboPascal 1 Turing 1 some functional lang. 1 [6] a) Many respondents expressed multiple preferences. All have been counted. This accounts for the large number of entries. b) Many respondents expressed qualifications. They have been noted. 7) Counts of other languages preferred for data structure course: C 3 C++ 2 Ada 1 Modula-2 1 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------