Folks --

I scanned through the list (it's far too long to read every post), and the
gist of it is that some people argue "pure OO from the beginning -- use
Smalltalk" some argue "you gotta understand the machine -- use assembler or
C" or a variety of reasons for using Java.  What is utterly lacking is any
discussion of the mission for a first year class.

My opinion is that change is needed in how computer science is taught -- it
is at least as important to understand how an event-driven interface such
as Java Swing works as how indexed indirect addressing works -- a lot more
people will be develoing user interfaces than OS kernels or device drivers.
I think UI design is good to introduce as early as possible, as it gives
the added benefit of teaching how to read and understand a library such as
Swing.  But the choice of language should follow from educational goals,
and I didn't see much about what the goals of CS1 should be in that thread.
Perhaps Mike Feldman can enlighten us all ;)

Mike

At 7:50 AM -0400 06/14/01, Jacob Sparre Andersen wrote:
>At slashdot.org there is currently a discussion of which
>language should be used for an introductory course in
>programming:
>
>http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/06/11/2021220&mode=nested
>
>I pressume that some of the educators on this list might
>want to put in a word or two...
>
>Greetings,
>
>Jacob
>--
>Harddiske er binære enheder: Enten er de nye, eller også er de fyldt op.


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Michael Stark                                                   Lead
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