On Tuesday, 12 March 2024 at 18:03:43 UTC, Lance Bachmeier wrote:
On Tuesday, 12 March 2024 at 17:03:42 UTC, Mike Shah wrote:
As a note, the 'which language is best for CS 1' debate has
long been debated -- but at least in a school setting, I've
found the quality/enthusiasm/encouragement of the teacher to
be the most important aspect regardless of language choice.
As someone that's been teaching beginners to program at a
university for a long time (but not in a CS department) I've
come to see the choice of language as largely unimportant. You
have to decide what you want to teach them and then eliminate
the languages that aren't suitable. D is one of many languages
that would work with the right content. Other languages, like
C++, add unnecessary overhead and thus should not be used.
It's often said "X is a complicated language" but that's the
wrong way to look at it. You're teaching a set of programming
concepts, not a language. The question is how well a particular
language works for learning those concepts.
I was always wondering about this debate on a suitable "first"
programming language in a CS curriculum. I largely observe one
dividing point: to start with a strongly-typed language or not.
(After that, it probably does not matter so much which language
is chosen; alas, it should be available on Windows, Linux, and
Mac OS). Do you observe similar sentiment in the discussions in
the university settings?
