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

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.