🚀 go-pugleaf

Barry Shein @ Boston University writes:
> I agree, an intro course should be a survey course. It should be shallow
> and a good intro into 'the great ideas' of the field just like any intro
> course in the sciences (bio, phys, chem etc). Some programming should be
> taught as in any good intro lab course (laboratory practices and methods,
> remember intro chem, bio...)

At Rutgers, our intro class IS an Introduction to Computer Science.  We
do some minor programming in PASCAL but the emphasis is not placed on
programming at all.  If your intro course is a survey course for languages,
you waste too much time teaching the languages instead of giving the students
a good taste of Computer Science.  In fact, since I've been at Rutgers, the
intro course has always used a computer with software that would make it
easiest to program in.  For example, when I got here the course was on
Teraks using the Cornell PL/CS Synthesizer, which uses templates.  In 1984,
the CS111 and CS112 moved to Mac Pascal.  The idea was that the student
should NOT play 'Shuffle the semi-colon' yet get the strong type checking
needed for beginning programmers.


> Personally, I hate Pascal and consider it the scourge of computer science,
> if I had to choose one language I would go with either C or Lisp.....
> ..... I would go for LISP because it's easy to get into, a reasonable
> interpreter works well with an editor, debugger and tracer.

The problem I have with LISP is that it involves recursion, a subject that
most of the people here were not very comfortable with until after their
intro course.  C, however, would not be a bad idea - especially if you do
not want to waste time in the future explaining the quirks of that language.
It is a lower level language in many ways but it still supports the higher
level operations.  However, you lose with weak type checking.

> I have decided to step into the fray here.

ARK @ SALLY.UTEXAS.EDU adds:
> (1) The object of an introductory course that includes programming is to
> teach problem solving techniques using a computer.  Teaching a programming
> language is a necessary vehicle for this (unless you wish only to use
> canned programs, and even there you have some sort of language).

I am glad you did.   This is exactly my point.

At Rutgers we have two survey courses involving languages - one for non-majors
that teaches BASIC, a text formatter, and a spread sheet; and the other is
a 300 level course that discusses in depth the structure/uses/limitations
of various languages.  The idea behind the first is to give the person who
doesn't use a computer a chance to discover its usefulness.  The reason the
second course is 300 level is that by this point, the student is expected
to be able to grasp languages faster.  In the past, this course has covered
SNOBOL, LISP, SETL, and PROLOG in depth while glancing over other languages.

	My point is that the introductory course should NOT be a language
survey course and it should use a language that has a strong enough back-
bone that it will catch silly mistakes and leave student to worry about the
logical errors.  Later on (s)he can pick up as many languages as (s)he wants.
That knocks C out of the water and since I don't consider recursion an
introductory idea, that knocks out lisp too.

	As far as assembly language is concerned,  I have a feeling I would
have become a better programmer if I got an intense shot of assembly first
but I doubt I would have gotten an introduction to the analysis of algorythms
in the process.  Also, one of the most important topics in our intro classes
is that of data structures.

					eliot lear

[lear@topaz.rutgers.edu]
[{allegra,seismo}!topaz!lear]