Hello Kirby, Wednesday, May 4, 2005, 4:11:32 AM, you wrote:
KU> I like CS courses which sample (in my freshman CS course a Princeton, we KU> played with SNOBOL, APL, PL/1, FORTRAN, and no doubt some others I've KU> forgotten). That being said, you also need an "anchor" or "home base" KU> language to help you nail it all down, and as a point of comparison. Python KU> makes a lot of sense in this role. Indeed. I think it better to use only one language in a first course. I remember my first course at BYU - we first learned PDP8 Assembly (which failed miserably) and then FORTRAN (which clicked). Your "home base" idea makes sense to me. KU> So of course I agree that Python is a strong candidate as the star of a KU> CS0/CS1 course and I fully expect it to continue making inroads deep into KU> that turf. KU> I also find it interesting that most of us here are considering it as an KU> alternative to either C++ or Java, but aren't mentioning Scheme (which has KU> been an intro CS language at MIT for some time). I have taught both Scheme and ML, as well as Python (but not in a beginning course). I think Python's advantage here is that it is not constrained to be a functional language. You can appeal to students' intuition with simple imperative statements and immediate use of the built-ins (lists, tuples, dictionaries). It takes a while for the mind to wrap itself around the functional paradigm, especially in a beginning course. I know that MIT and the U. of Utah claim "success" in using Scheme as a first language, but I don't buy it. Especially at MIT, they don't have typical students. -- Best regards, Chuck _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig