From: Devin Mullins <twifkak@...>
Date: 2006-12-10T05:15:14+09:00
Subject: Re: [OT] educational programming languages (was: Fwd: Seymour Papert Gravely Injured in Motorbike Accident)

M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:
> Along those lines, what do they teach undergraduates today? Mostly 
> Scheme and Java, I think.
<life-story>
At age 8, I started with BASIC (gwbasic, qbasic, etc.). I'm not sure who 
recommended that language -- it might've been an undergrad that my mom 
hired to "tutor" me. At around 4th grade, I got private teaching from a 
high school CS teacher, in Pascal (and a brief stint in Karel). 7th & 
8th I took C/C++ in a high school CS course, an AP CS course, and a 
community college course. In 12th grade, some teachers tried to get us 
hooked on CLisp and Python, but it didn't stick.

*In* college, we programmed in C++, with the exception of a Compilers 
and Languages course, which had us writing parsers & interpreters in 
OCaml (though, granted, with little O), with a little stint in Prolog, 
just to show us what else is out there.

Finally, nowadays, I'm told that my alma mater is teaching in Java. 
(Boo.) I imagine the same exception applies for the Compilers, course, 
though.
</life-story>

And my opinion, FWIW: A combination of a language that maps closely to 
how we think (say, Ruby), with a language that maps closely to how the 
computer thinks (say, C, or even some assembly language).

Devin

PS--I saw LOGO, briefly, in some computer camp. Stayed away from it.