Programming languages for introductory computing courses: a position paper

  • Authors:

  • N. Solntseff

  • Affiliations:

  • McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario

  • Venue:
  • SIGCSE '78 Papers of the SIGCSE/CSA technical symposium on Computer science education
  • Year:
  • 1978

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Abstract

This paper examines the question of the programming language to be used in introductory computing courses. It is found that there are three distinct groups of students that have to be catered for in introductory courses: the "casual user", the "general user", and the "professional user". The manner in which the introductory courses fit into the student's curriculum are examined next and an analogy is developed between "structured programming" and teaching. This analogy is used to draw conclusions concerning the descriptive properties of the pedagogic language to be used. Issues concerning the modularity of both data and procedure structures are reviewed and the emergence of programming languages specifically designed to enhance their descriptive powers in this area is noted. It is concluded that there is a need for a pedagogic language that can be used in all courses in which the computer is an object of study and that the most commonly used languages, namely, FORTRAN and PL/I fail to meet the requirements deduced in this paper. At the present time, Pascal is the only widely known language that can be considered for this role.