David Boyes wrote:
It appears to me that many/most college computer science
departments
teach Java as the first language - sometimes as effectively the only
That's moderately sensible, and arguably better than the Fortran I
started on.
Only moderately, though. It's disappointing that when a lot of the
youngsters have to take the strongly typed training wheels of Java off,
it's really hard for them to do it.
I'm not sure I'd want any of the C family (and I include Java here)
taught, given _my_ druthers. I'd go with PL/1 (but last I saw it, it
really needed some serious revisions in line with modern thinking),
COBOL, Python.
I might then accede to something from the C family.
It seems to me that most times someone invents a new language (and Java
is a good example), its proponents think it has to look like C.
I think that's one of the major defects of the ACM CS1 and CS2
recommended curriculums -- it's possible to be mono-lingual and still be
compliant, and the kids don't get to see examples of the major types of
languages and where they are most effective. Functional and data-driven
languages have good reasons to exist, and there are problems that really
are appropriate for them, and not procedural languages.
language. Perhaps that's why C is in 2nd place.
Note that Pascal is coming up fast! It moved from 22nd place to
15th
place in a year.
If one accepts Delphi as being largely an implementation of Pascal,
it's
even better.
I guess I have too many scars from DEC-10 Pascal and VS Pascal as used
in VM TCPIP to think that ANY Pascal is a good idea...8-)
I have largely fond memories of Turbo Pascal, and I'd be happy to be
able to program to the standards implemented in TP 6.0 (character-based
interface, mouse-enabled). With Turbo Vision, it has a good range of
components for building UIs, and while one _can_ shoot oneself in the
foot, it's not as easily done as it is in C.
It's encouraging to see both Perl and REXX in the top 50. REXX seems to
finally be coming into it's own on non-IBM platforms.
I was sifting through some floppies a couple of days ago, saw my DR PL/1
for PC-DOS 1.0. I just need a 5 1/4" drive to read them.
--
Cheers
John
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