I agree that it depends on what is the purpose of the course. It also depends on available course time. In practice, the objects-first approach requires lots of training time and pays off only in the long run.
For example: global variables are bad style, but it is hard to get students tell the difference between a global variable and an object field. I often see students use fields to pass the result of an operation (method) to another operation. If the students are absolute beginners, algorithms take precedence over structure and design. I would give priority to teaching array processing over the distinction between a local variable and an object field. Of the languages you mention, this points to C. Unless you have a specific reason for considering it, my advice is: forget C++ :-) My 2 cents (FYI, I'm about to leave on holiday, so I won't be able to keep contributing to the discussion, sorry) -- Miguel P. Monteiro | cell phone +351 96 700 35 45 Departamento de Informatica | Phone +351 21 294 8536 ext. 10708 Faculdade Ciencias e Tecnol.| Fax: +351 21 294 8541 Universidade Nova de Lisboa | URL: http://ctp.di.fct.unl.pt/~mpm 2829-516 Caparica, PORTUGAL | Skype: miguel.p.monteiro Em Seg, Abril 6, 2009 10:57 am, Jan Erik Moström escreveu: > On 09-04-06 at 11.10, Bennett Kankuzi <bfkank...@gmail.com> wrote: > >>Searching through the web I note that the issue on the choice of an >>introductory programming language to students is quite debatable. What >>is your take PPIGers on this issue? What can you recommend for my >>situation? > > Personally I would consider what the purpose of the course is, > what do you expect the kids to learn. My opinion is that it's > the problem solving part that's important and that's what they > should learn ... the programming language is just a specific > notation for their solution. > > So assuming that it's problem solving part that is of importance > then you only have to give them an easy way of writing down > their solution ... which pretty much rule out all three of these > languages :-D > > Frankly I have difficulties in deciding which is "the least bad choice". > > jem > -- > Jan Erik Moström, http://mostrom.eu
