hgoldber@polyob.UUCP (A1 harry goldberg ) (02/17/86)
am interested in hearing pros and cons about using pascal as the flanguage to teach introductory programming to freshmen (ug's and grad's pleez respond directly to my login iguana!polyof!polyob!hgoldber *** REPLACE THIS LINE WITH YOUR MESSAGE ***
perry@leopard.UUCP (Perry S. Kivolowitz) (02/21/86)
I believe Pascal is a good first programming language. However, it has been my experience that undergraduates trained only in Pascal have had their imagination destroyed. I would suggest that Pascal be used as an introductory procedural lan- guage to be replaced in the second year by C. To go one step further I would replace C in the third year of study with C++ to get students used to the idea of non-procedural languages (there can be an object- oriented to C++ sources). Overall, I'd like to less emphasis on Pascal. It is a dry, uninspired language suitable for use in introductory courses or very highly main- tainable but non-the-less uninteresting applications. I'd like to see non-procedural languages introduced. That's my big wish if I had it to do all over again. It's real hard after 11 years of procedural languages to break out of that mind set. Perry S. Kivolowitz
lamy@utai.UUCP (Jean-Francois Lamy) (02/24/86)
In article <156@leopard.UUCP> perry@leopard.UUCP (Perry S. Kivolowitz) writes: >I would suggest that Pascal be used as an introductory procedural lan- >guage to be replaced in the second year by C. To go one step further I >would replace C in the third year of study with C++ to get students >used to the idea of non-procedural languages (there can be an object- >oriented to C++ sources). Huh? C++ (or object-oriented languages) are hardly "non-procedural". At Universite de Montreal Pascal has been used since the early 70's to teach computer science majors. It has never been used alone though. The program lasts three years (our first year students would be sophomores in the U.S. - we have one extra year of school before university) At the present time, Pascal is used for the first semester, and is covered in its entirety (i.e. pointers et al.). Ada is used in the second term. Second year students get exposed to low-level programming on micro computers (assembly language and C), but the data structures and algorithms courses still use Pascal. They also get a dose of object-oriented languages since the simulation courses are taught using Simula. Third year students can get a taste of Prolog or Lisp if they choose an AI course, and quite a few bachelor's thesis are implemented in C. Introductory courses for the "general public" (electives and minors) are taught using Pascal on a bunch of dedicated PCs. No complaints there (Turbo Pascal is fast enough for 300 lines max.). In my experience Pascal is quite appropriate as an introductory language because it allows the students to concentrate on a few control structures. However, it should not be used exclusively because it lacks support for modular programming (NOT because it stiffles imagination - imaginative assignements can produce imaginative programmers). Using Pascal and Ada allows us to drive home the structured programming gospel before putting the students in situations where they get the opportunity to really screw things up. -- Jean-Francois Lamy Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto, Departement d'informatique et de recherche operationnelle, U. de Montreal. CSNet: lamy@toronto UUCP: {ihnp4,utzoo,decwrl,uw-beaver}!utcsri!utai!lamy EAN: lamy@iro.udem.cdn ARPA: lamy%toronto@csnet-relay
ladkin@kestrel.ARPA (Peter Ladkin) (02/25/86)
In article <156@leopard.UUCP>, perry@leopard.UUCP (Perry S. Kivolowitz) writes: > I believe Pascal is a good first programming language. However, it has > been my experience that undergraduates trained only in Pascal have had > their imagination destroyed. Poor Wirth! And this was exactly contrary to his intent. If he couldn't succeed, would anyone else dare try? > I would suggest that Pascal be used as an introductory procedural lan- > guage to be replaced in the second year by C. [Then C++]. Reality will unfortunately intervene. Languages are a tool, not an end. Of course, it's always helpful to be multilingual. But not compulsory. > Overall, I'd like to less emphasis on Pascal. It is a dry, uninspired > language suitable for use in introductory courses or very highly main- > tainable but non-the-less uninteresting applications. How things change! I thought Wirth's Algorithms book was a landmark. But then, we were comparing it with MIX. > I'd like to see non-procedural languages introduced. Some have suggested LISP as an appropriate start, like Touretsky. Nowadays, though LISP is hardly non-procedural, unless you stick to pure LISP. And it doesn't have typing or other protection facilities. You say, which LISP am I talking about? Enough said. Does anyone have any candidates? Peter Ladkin
eugene@ames.UUCP (Eugene Miya) (02/28/86)
I know there are at least three other members of the Usenet who
sat on the Pascal Standards Committee when I did.
I've read several comments about what should be taught as well as
"Yes Pascal is a good teaching language." I would qualify the
latter. It was a decent 1970s teaching language. Based on my ideas
about teaching programming [like those I mention from other letters]
such as "algorithmic thinking" and "problem solving," I no longer
think it's a good programming language for teaching.
Programming languages are too low-level. I thought about attacking the
introductory programming language problem using a set of restricted
shell commands, pipes, and &'s to cover some of the issues of programming:
conditions and branching, sequential things, and parallelism (protection
of data, side effects and such). I've heard that UCB was using AWK
as a first language. We need a better environment to teach in.
Teaching a person about programming graphics for instance is done at
too low a level. Note I said nothing about graphics or interfaces,
and performance (the ability to time a pipeline is certainly possible) in
my description of a teaching workbench(?), but these are the types of
things an introductory programming environment should now incorporate
(if this sounds like Smalltalk-80(tm), I want to go beyond that).
Interaction is important, to a degree, so are performance and functionality.
From the Rock of Ages Home for Retired Hackers:
--eugene miya
NASA Ames Research Center
{hplabs,ihnp4,dual,hao,decwrl,allegra}!ames!aurora!eugene
eugene@ames-nas.ARPA
General disclaimer: the above are the opinions of the author and not
the Center or Agency. Any mention of commerical products does not
constitute an endorsement and is only mentioned as a point of reference.
Obvious trademarks:
Smalltalk-80 is a trademark of Xerox Corp.
Xerox is a trademark of Xerox Corp.rb@ccivax.UUCP (rex ballard) (03/06/86)
In article <111@polyob.UUCP> hgoldber@polyob.UUCP (A1 harry goldberg ) writes: >am interested in hearing pros and cons about using pascal as the >flanguage to teach introductory programming to freshmen (ug's and grad's As an introdutory language, pascal offers fairly good type checking, and is very strict. At least they won't be "debugging" for syntax errors. Also, good design techniques are generally included with these courses, although Yourdon should also be included. Ideally, a language as structured and strict as pascal should be made interactive (interpreter?) so that students can experiment with smaller modules and build up to a working implementation. This is about the only good thing I can say about BASIC. I've used BASIC to teach 8 to 18 year olds, and the advantages of being able to test a small routine before integrating it into the larger program can be a valuable educational benefit. The important thing to remember about BASIC is to stress structured concepts (gosubs, if then, for next, while do (if available)) before letting the student experiment with goto's. Most students have learned BASIC (and some bad habits) before they get to college. It would be nice if students could be taught Pascal in high school as well. Nuff said about that. In terms of longer program that gives a balanced education, Pascal should be followed by: Assembler - to teach the principles of the actual machine operations. Ideally, this should even include a very general background in how the micro-code interpreter works. This helps the student to understand how the computer works. Forth - Interactive nature and "bottom up implementation" along with several other constraints of the language can lead to some good habits and design techniques. SmallTalk or some other object oriented language - this teaches organizational techniques and principles that can be used in other languages. C - If preceeded by these other languages, the student is able to take advantage of the flexibility of this language more effectively. At this point, if they know the rules and principles, students can break them (sparingly) in C without the compiler shutting down.