As a follow up note to my earlier comments, it might be worth considering why the current language (at Swat, currently C, but transitioning to Java) is used in the intro course? Certainly C at least is a language worth knowing as a computer scientist, but need it be introduced to students who've never used anything other than Windows or Mac OS? Probably not. Are there any good reasons why such a low-level language ought to be taught in the intro-intro course, other than that the faculty probably know it pretty well? I see it fitting in nicely as a mid-level class, or even as a task students take on when in a class that requires knowing C (my experience has been that picking up a new programming language is time consuming but not that difficult).
Swat at least wants to keep a one-track intro to the department, but I'm not as certain that's the right choice, since it seems important to recognize the two primary experience levels incoming students have: none and some. Students in the none category are likely to be scared off by C -- a friend of mine this year who I encouraged to take our intro class was scared off exactly for this reason after 2 classes. Students in the second category have probably already programmed in C (or now, what with the AP, Java) and would either not take the class, or gain little from it. One of our intro class used to be taught in Scheme, which leveled the playing field among the two groups of students, and taught good recusive practice to all rising CS students. Java seems unlikely to help in either of those ways, and, at least as far as I know, is not even one of the primary research languages. OK, now I'm just complaining about Java, so I'll stop. dsc _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list [email protected] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
