Newsgroups: comp.edu,comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c++,comp.lang.modula2,comp.lang.scheme
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From: mat@mole-end.matawan.nj.us
Subject: Re: Comparison of languages for CS1 and CS2
Message-ID: <1995Jul17.212647.4032@mole-end.matawan.nj.us>
Organization: :
References: <3srsn5$q8d@galaxy.ucr.edu> <3trm48$n4i@duke.cs.duke.edu> <dewar.805504060@gnat>
Date: Mon, 17 Jul 1995 21:26:47 GMT
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Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu comp.edu:13385 comp.lang.ada:32832 comp.lang.c++:139112 comp.lang.modula2:12121 comp.lang.scheme:13253

In article <dewar.805504060@gnat>, dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes:
> "The EE department won't hear of it"
> 
> Hmm! the same argument that kept Fortran as the major teaching language
> in the US, long after the rest of the world had abandoned it (see the
> survey in British Journal of Computer Science, circa 1970).
> 
> It sure seems a shame that we have gone backwards so much. For a long time
> Fortran was taught in CS department as the first language, largely because
> of such utilitarian arguments as the one above. This was still true when
> the most popular teaching language in Europe had shifted from Algol-60
> to either Algol-68 (UK) or Simula-67 (rest of Europe).
> 
> Then, we woke up, and switched to Pascal, on purely pedagogical grounds,
> despite the complaints of EE departments and the like (who never liked
> Pascal, or certainly did not at first), but (amazing concept) computer
> science departments decided they should teach the appropriate language,
> regardless of these kind of demands.
> 
> Now here we are again, arguing for C++ on utilitarian grounds. I really
> wouldn't mind so much if advocates of C and C++ were arguming that it was
> the best choice from a pedagogical point of view, ...


The point is that Fortran is not adequate from a pedagogical point of
view.  You can't do recursively linked data structures, except by
faking them though a fixed, preallocated array.

On the other hand, C and C++ provide that capability _as well as_ the
long-term utility.
-- 
 (This man's opinions are his own.)
 From mole-end				Mark Terribile
 mat@mole-end.matawan.nj.us, Somewhere in Matawan, NJ
	(Training and consulting in C, C++, UNIX, etc.)
