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From: pattis@cs.washington.edu (Richard Pattis)
Subject: Re: Repost of the Reid Report #12; CS1 languages
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Date: Thu, 13 Jul 1995 00:28:51 GMT
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Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu comp.edu:13239 comp.lang.ada:32550 comp.lang.c++:138131 comp.lang.modula2:12025 comp.lang.scheme:13151 comp.lang.pascal.ansi-iso:69

>:  153 Pascal
>:   73 Ada
>:   51 Scheme
>:   36 Modula
>:   36 C
>:   27 C++
>
>The above are the top six languages, at least in terms of number of 
>schools, which may not be the same as number of students.
>
>This shows Ada doing very well, second only to Pascal (the traditional
>choice) and ahead of the sum of C+C++.  Great!
>

Just a note on interpretation; The Ada and Scheme people are very active
in keeping their numbers current (thanks to Mike Feldman and the Schemers Inc.
company). So, I expect their numbers are very accurately representing who
is using Ada and Scheme in CS1, while the numbers for the other languages
are under represented.

Other ways to look at these numbers involve the "prestige" of the schools,
and the sizes of the schools. For example, the Open University recently
decided to do their CS1 course in SmallTalk; that is one place, but the
enrollment in its CS1 course is something like 10K.

Finally, another measure of the health of a language in CS1 is the number
of new textbooks that are coming out. I have not seen a proposal for a
new Ada book, while I know of multiple CS1 in C++ books that are in the
works.

Here is some postprocessing I did on the last list that came out, comparing
it to the previous liast.

Language	Count		%	Delta % from April 94 (388 responses)
---------------------------------------------------------------
Pascal		150		36		-4.2
Ada		 73		17.5		+2.3
Scheme		 51		12.2		- .2
Modula (-2/-3)	 44		10.6		-2.8
C		 36		 8.6		+ .4
C++		 27		 6.5		+2.9
FORTRAN		  9		 2.2		- .1
Turing		  6		 1.4		+ .1
[S]ML		  6		 1.4		+ .4
Miranda		  4		 1		+ .5
Eiffel		  2		  .5		+ .5 (not on 94 list)
ISETL		  2		  .5		 0
Beta		  1		  .2		+ .2 (not on 94 list)
Oberon		  1		  .2		- .1
Object Pascal	  1		  .2		- .1
Orwell		  1		  .2		- .1
Prolog		  1		  .2		+ .2 (not on 94 list)
Simula		  1		  .2		- .1
Smalltalk	  1		  .2		- .1
		----		-----		-----
		417		99.8            - .3 (% summed to 100.1 in 94)

Rich

-- 
  Richard E. Pattis                  "When debugging, a novice programmer
  Looking for a Job		      inserts corrective code; an
			              experienced programmer removes
			              defective code." 
