One podcast that I enjoy is Dr Karl on JJJ in Australia. It's a segment where people ring up and ask science questions and Dr Karl tries to answer them. He also takes answers from other listeners on the web. Normally quite interesting.
A first programming course should be about algorithms, functional decomposition, abstract data types, recursion, etc. etc. In other words all the concepts of computer science that are the same *NO* matter what language you are using.
So your the first language taught should allow the student easy access to these concepts without having to deal with the idiosyncracies of explicit memory management, the distinction of pass by reference and pass by value, pointers and so on.
That is why here we teach Haskell as our first language. We believe that it allows students to grasp these concepts without getting the dreaded seg fault.
It also helps ensure that when students leave this University they will have learnt to program an imperative language (C), functional (Haskell), OO (C++) and logical (Prolog/Mercury), and will be able to choose the correct tool for the job.
Personally after seeing trees implemented in Haskell after learning how to implement them in C converted me to functional programming.
What I find amazing about America is your fascination with carrying guns. Here in Australia we had someone go on a rampage with a semi-automatic gun and kill 40 odd people. Our response was to make semi-automatic guns illegal and make it harder to obtain guns in general (pity it took a massacre to make it happen).
Why in America does it seem to focus on what factors made the people do it, and not on why don't we try and make it more difficult for people to obtain guns and then go and do these things.
Slashdot Mirror
One podcast that I enjoy is Dr Karl on JJJ in Australia. It's a segment where people ring up and ask science questions and Dr Karl tries to answer them. He also takes answers from other listeners on the web. Normally quite interesting.
Find out how to listen at http://www.abc.net.au/science/k2/stn/podcast.htm
So your the first language taught should allow the student easy access to these concepts without having to deal with the idiosyncracies of explicit memory management, the distinction of pass by reference and pass by value, pointers and so on.
That is why here we teach Haskell as our first language. We believe that it allows students to grasp these concepts without getting the dreaded seg fault.
It also helps ensure that when students leave this University they will have learnt to program an imperative language (C), functional (Haskell), OO (C++) and logical (Prolog/Mercury), and will be able to choose the correct tool for the job.
Personally after seeing trees implemented in Haskell after learning how to implement them in C converted me to functional programming.
Pete.
What I find amazing about America is your fascination with carrying guns. Here in Australia we had someone go on a rampage with a semi-automatic gun and kill 40 odd people. Our response was to make semi-automatic guns illegal and make it harder to obtain guns in general (pity it took a massacre to make it happen).
Why in America does it seem to focus on what factors made the people do it, and not on why don't we try and make it more difficult for people to obtain guns and then go and do these things.