Only a month late, I finally reply. On Wed, Nov 20, 2002 at 04:05:05PM -0800, isaac gouy wrote: > > case studies or experiments that would help > > evaluate the use of Java as a first programming > > language (as compared to C or C++)? > > Linda McIver's thesis compares the suitability of > these, and other, languages as first programming > languages. > > http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~lindap/papers/LindaMcIverThesis.pdf > > "In order to program in Java for the first time, there > are many concepts that students must either understand > or take on faith. Due to the module-based, > object-oriented nature of the language, even the > simplest Java program requires a complex structure" Thanks for the publicity, Isaac. :) Unfortunately the comparison of languages in the thesis is not empirically based, except for the part of the thesis that describes an experiment involving a comparison between my language, GRAIL, and LOGO.
> She presented research at the 12th PPIG workshop, and > has come up with a wonderful idea: the Zero-th > programming language: > "The language, GRAIL, is designed to be used *before* > the first programming course, to enable students to > become familiar with programming concepts with the > attendent need to grapple with the syntactic and > semantic complexities of a full modern programming > language." > http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~lindap/research.html The idea might be pedagogically sound (no doubt that will be contentious :), but it's not necessarily politically sound. It's very difficult to convince departments, and indeed students, to take on a non-industry-relevant language as part of a computing degree, even short-term. It would be nice to have evidence that students who are given such a language as their short-term introductory language end up being better programmers, but the ethical considerations of trying to test such a theory in a single course are probably insurmountable, and testing across courses/institutions generally involves too many variables to give conclusive results. -- Dr Linda McIver Monash University Lecturer ph: +61 3 9905 5210 Computer Science and Software Engineering fx: +61 3 9905 5146 -- "The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in the way." William Blake 1799 - Automatic footer for [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---------------------------------- To unsubscribe from this list, mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] unsubscribe discuss To join the announcements list, mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe announce To receive a help file, mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] help This list is archived at http://www.mail-archive.com/discuss%40ppig.org/ If you have any problems or questions, please mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
