Best Paradigm For a First Programming Course?

Keyper7 writes "The first programming course I had during my computer science schooling, aptly named 'Introduction to Programming,' was given in C because its emphasis was on imperative programming. A little before I graduated, though, it was decided that the focus would change to object-oriented programming with Java. (I must emphasize that the change was not made because of any hype about Java or to dumb down the course; back then and still, it's presented by good Java programmers who try to teach good practices and do not encourage excessive reliance on libraries.) But the practices taught are not paradigm-independent, and this sparked a discussion that continues to this day: which paradigm is most appropriate to introduce programming? Besides imperative and object-oriented, I know teachers who firmly believe that functional programming is the best choice. I'm interested in language-independent opinions that Slashdotters might have on this matter. Which paradigm is good to introduce programming while keeping a freshman's mind free enough for him/her to learn other paradigms afterwards?"

Comments

Teach them All

[Maple Syrup]

The classic text SCIP teaches multiple computing paradigms. A fluent computer scientist should know all of them.

Consider Python

[Fished]

First off, a disclaimer: I'm actually not (much) of a Python programmer--I much prefer Ruby.

However, my Dad teaches Math & Physics at the high school level, and got tapped to teach an intro to programming class this year. On my advice, he bypassed C++ (which he kind of knew) and Java, and taught it in Python using this book:

Python Programming: An Introduction to Computer Science (Paperback)

He has been absolutely delighted with the book and with how well the students have done with Python as a first language. His comment has been that he wishes he had been exposed to Python instead of (many years ago) Fortran and (more recently) C++ -- he might have actually learned to program. ;) It seems that Python's a good choice--it's an easy language to learn, supports procedural, object-oriented, and functional programming, and has all the usual advantages of a dynamic language for programmer usability.

Now if only they would do a version of that book in Ruby... :)

Re:Weakest Precondition Calculus

[El Cabri]

+1 for that.

I love functional programming but let's face it, computers are state machines and you cannot really program them without understanding how programs modify their state. Hoare. Dijkstra. Read them. Embrace them. Feel the pain of bending your mind around them.

back in the old days...

[micromuncher]

I went to an unnamed university that did not teach languages specifically. First year was theory, basic architecture, and PDP11 assembler on a simulator. There was one introduction to structured programming with Pascal.

Year two saw more theory including algorithms and data structures. The language chosen was modula-2 and we were expected to pick it up on our own. There was another low level course on hybrid 6502/68000 machines writing low level I/O in assembly. Again, we had to pick it up ourselves.

Year three got fun with hardware; async circuits, build your own 68000 based computer, OS (multitasking) and database concepts. We also had our new software engineering courses learning all about CMM and such.

Fourth year was simulation, HCI, write a compiler, and special projects. It was assumed we'd picked up C/C++ by that point on our own.

There were three streams at our U; hardware, computer graphics, or knowledge sciences. There was a lot of math - that I didn't appreciate until after I left. But one I learned is why and how things work at a low level. It was a computer science degree.

Programs like this don't seem to exist anymore; at least if they do they're more in engineering than compsci. This is really too bad. Because as one post already noted; the problem is one of problem solving vs. skills to get a job.

I still use state machines, optimization, algorithms, data structures knowledge in everything I do. Most of the people I work with have no idea why I care about such things, but usually they're impressed that my stuff just works more better.

IAE my advice to you is learn as many languages as you can because no one specific language or paradigm encompases computer science. Go do some lisp, smalltalk, java, and assembly programming... you'll see what I mean.

Re:Functional languages are phenomenal.

[francium de neobie]

Really? Last time I checked...

1. There's no need to wrap a closure in a "function class" in Python. And I don't have to cast everything down to Object every so often. So while, theoretically, you can do functional programming in both Java and Python, in practice it is much easier in Python.
2. There's no need to wrap the "main()" function in a class in Python - in fact, I can go without writing the main(). Looks like a minor point but it saves a good portion of your time for trivial programs. Also, I don't need to compile it.
3. I have list and dictionary literals; I don't have to care what is the "type" of the list and dictionary when I create it - type of elements can be examined by duck typing or isinstance() if I need to - but usually it isn't needed; list comprehension is a really good time saver, makes the code easier to read as well.
4. I have an interactive command line for doing experiments. I can even read manuals in the command line via the help() function.
5. I have exec() in Python. It isn't as useful or as dynamic as eval() in Lisp, but that's something Java definitely cannot do on a language level. Sure, you can write a library that calls the Java compiler real time to emulate that... but I'm talking about the language itself.

Doesn't look very "same class" to me. At least when I'm considering which language to use for solving which problem.