On Fri, Dec 27, 2002 at 04:12:05PM -0500, Adam Turoff wrote: > > brian listed the reason why Perl isn't the primary language of instruction: > Perl hides the formalisms that a CS program is supposed to teach. Other > reasons are the lack of textbooks for the standard CS classes that use > Perl, and the higher demand for Java in the workplace compared to Perl.
While I agree that those reasons count against Perl being used as a primary language of instruction, there's another, IMO, larger reason. It's the same reason why "Mastering Algorithms with Perl" fails. The language itself is too rich; you continually have to side-step from teaching formalisms to discuss syntax quirks, short-cuts, functions or yet another module. All these bells-and-whistles make that Perl is a great language, but that doesn't mean it's a good tool to teach programming or formalisms with. Abigail
