Teach Programming

289 readers

1 users here now

Icon base by Delapouite under CC BY 3.0 with modifications to add a gradient

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

Ategon

JaumeI

Intro CS: Python, Java, C, Lisp, or Haskell? (self.teach_programming)

submitted 10 months ago by DaleGribble88 to c/teach_programming

11 comments fedilink hide all child comments

How does your school/university teach it? What have been the pros and cons of that choice?
Obviously, teaching students logical and foundational concepts is the most important part, but a student's first programming language does color their internalization of the concepts and how they approach solving different problems. For example, OOP is really hard to grasp coming from a functional background. Learning how to manage memory efficiently and use appropriate data types is really hard coming from an interpreted language like Python or Javascript. What have you and your peers decided works best for you and your students?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] DaleGribble88 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I've been advocating for a CS50 style course at an introductory level. A little bit of python, some light data science labs with an SQLite database, throw some javascript at it to make some quick and dirty web representation. Really, all we want out of students are basic problem-solving skills, a familiarity with programming basics, and for students to be excited to learn more. I've got one other instructor in the department on board with this approach, but the rest are still having a little bit of trouble moving our courses out of the 1990s.

[–] ericjmorey 1 points 10 months ago

Awesome! I hope you can drag them along.