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

Re:Functional

[El Cabri]

There are no two things more opposite to each other than OOP and functional programming. Functional programming is about FUNCTIONS, which are those that return a value that is completely determined by their arguments, not depending on, or modifying, any state. OOP is all about calling METHODS, which have values that are determined by both the arguments and the state of the object they're called on, and often are meant to modify that state.

Learn at least two paradigms WELL

[_greg]

I recommend learning at least two languages representing significantly different paradigms during a programmer's formative period. In this instance I consider C, C++, Java, C# and the lot to be in the same paradigm - procedural.

Haskell is a good language for exploring the functional paradigm. Smalltalk is good for object oriented. There are many good Prologs for learning logic relational programming. I recommend that a new programmer avoid multiparadigm languages until they have seriously explored programming in a more pure way in two or more paradigms.

I used to recommend SICP, now I recommend CTM.

Also important is to (1) enjoy the programming you are doing and (2) work on programs which do interesting things and get you feedback from others.

Re:All of them.

[i.of.the.storm]

That's similar to what my first college CS course has been like. We used SICP and it was a really interesting semester. We did functional, OO, client/server, and logic programming (or well those were the 4 paradigms that the prof considered the main ones) and it was pretty interesting. Since most people came in with OO experience only, doing functional programming through people for a loop at first. Of course, we did it all in Scheme, which is a cool language, too.