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Python is now the most popular introductory language at top U.S. universities

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Re: Python is now the most popular introductory language at top U.S. universities

#161

Post by commandar »

simonw wrote: post #105
lettergram wrote: post #98

Honestly, I'm not surprised, but I believe this is bad news. Learning C programming (first) was probably the most advantageous thing that has ever happened in my life of programming. When you understand C you understand how the computer functions, and in turn can write better software. It prepared me for virtually all programming and has enabled me to understand concepts correctly, the first time, and has made my lif…

I think C makes a great second language. Use Python to teach if statements, variables, control structures etc - then later use C to teach low-level algorithms, pointers and how computers actually work. I don't think there's any harm in learning Python first. I think they may be harm in learning C first - it's much more likely to frustrate people and potentially even put them off programming. This is the same reason I…

>This is the same reason I dislike Java as a teaching language: having to tell people "don't worry about what public static void main(String[] args) means just yet" when teaching "hello world" isn't a great introduction to programming.

This is exactly why I have always thought that the move to Java for intro courses was a terrible idea.

C/C++ were never ideal for beginners, but it was still possible to strip it down to building blocks without immediately resorting "don't worry about this now."

Re: Python is now the most popular introductory language at top U.S. universities

#162

Post by [deleted] »

candeira wrote: post #106

I work at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. Last year we moved our foundational course in data structures and algorithms from Java to Python, with great success. This is a course that used to be taught in C, then moved to Java. I tutored it as a Java course, and was in charge of adapting the tutorial (classroom exercises) and laboratory (programming assignments) materials when we started using Python to teac…

[deleted]

Re: Python is now the most popular introductory language at top U.S. universities

#163

Post by pgbovine »

Author here: Please email course correction requests to philip@pgbovine.net ... I'll probably miss a few important corrections amidst the hundreds of comments.

As a clarification, a CS0 or CS1 course usually has no CS prerequisites, so if a course you're trying to mention has other CS prereqs, then it's probably not CS0 or CS1.

ha, feel free to DOWNVOTE so that this appears at the very bottom, so that it's visible :) but don't downvote so much that it disappears.

Re: Python is now the most popular introductory language at top U.S. universities

#164

Post by marcosdumay »

phkahler wrote: post #28
pvnick wrote: post #21

One of the classes offered in my major (biochemistry) is "Python Programming for Biology" which is generally the first exposure that most of my peers get to programming, and I tell anyone who will listen how important that class is. Especially in the sciences, Python has a plethora of scientific libraries and great resources to do just about anything that a non-career coder would need. Except in computational chemist…

What are the ancient libraries used by computational chemists? I hope to get some insight to the field based on the answer to this question ;-)

I got the impression that mostly everybody writes computational chemistry libraries in FORTRAN. The libraries are not older than in any other field. Some are quite modern, and have wrappers for several languages, but they are always in FORTRAN.

Re: Python is now the most popular introductory language at top U.S. universities

#165

Post by yminsky »

pgbovine wrote: post #155
pgbovine wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, will look into those and update accordingly. However, Harvard CS51 doesn't count as CS1 since CS50 is already its CS1 course. (But please correct me if I'm wrong.)

(arg can't reply to your reply) this is actually quite important ... let me keep looking into this. sorry there's a giant backlog of (often angry!) emails in my inbox right now ... might not be able to sort thru them all :) i wish the blogging platform supported some version-control friendly format. [Edit: I made a typo about Penn CS120 ... I mistakenly found another course named CS120 that wasn't at Penn. Also, Harv…

It depends on what CS1 really means. I do think cs51 is comparable to CIS120 at Penn, and I think the later is pretty clearly CS1. That said, I find it hard to really figure out what the precise criteria are. It's pretty clear that Harvard encourages concentrators to take cs50, but I think the same course at other institutions would often be skipped by concentrators.

Re: Python is now the most popular introductory language at top U.S. universities

#166

Post by doug3465 »

yminsky wrote: post #142
pgbovine wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Author here. Thanks for your comments blahedo. I'm a bit short on time right now, but I will convert some parts of this response into more coherent form and edit my article accordingly to clarify. I'll address each of your paragraphs in turn: 1.) Re: CS0 vs. CS1. Like you mentioned, I was very upfront about the methodology for this analysis. And I am very aware that most CS majors do not ever take a CS0 course. But p…

ML (OCaml and SML) seems to get short shrift in your analysis. CS51 at Harvard is in OCaml. Brown's cs017 is OCaml, Scheme, Scala and Java. Penn's CS120 is OCaml (I think. It definitely used to be, but I can't find the course online anymore. You can reach out to Benjamin Pierce to ask, though.) And CMU has an SML-based FP course as part of their intro sequence None of this is to deny the fact that Python is highly po…

Penn's CIS120 is half OCaml and half a continuation of Java from 110 (the first course). Python is not found in the intro courses at Penn. Just Java and OCaml.

Re: Python is now the most popular introductory language at top U.S. universities

#167

Post by Igglyboo »

donatj wrote: post #143
Igglyboo wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're majoring in CS not Web Development. PHP doesn't really do anything other than web dev which makes it a poor fit for a general purpose CS curriculum.

> PHP doesn't really do anything other than web dev This is such a complete misconception. Command line apps written in PHP are becoming increasingly popular, not to mention the fact that PHP runs everywhere .

So does Java and C and Python to some extent. I don't know a single linux distro that ships without python.

Re: Python is now the most popular introductory language at top U.S. universities

#168

Post by pgbovine »

pgbovine wrote: post #155
pgbovine wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, will look into those and update accordingly. However, Harvard CS51 doesn't count as CS1 since CS50 is already its CS1 course. (But please correct me if I'm wrong.)

(arg can't reply to your reply) this is actually quite important ... let me keep looking into this. sorry there's a giant backlog of (often angry!) emails in my inbox right now ... might not be able to sort thru them all :) i wish the blogging platform supported some version-control friendly format. [Edit: I made a typo about Penn CS120 ... I mistakenly found another course named CS120 that wasn't at Penn. Also, Harv…

@yminsky -- yep, taxonomies r hard :) but i'm trying to go as much as possible by what each department proclaims for itself rather than trying to calibrate across departments. If Harvard calls a class "Computer Science II", I'm going to consider it as CS2. (fwiw I consider Harvard CS50 a hybrid of CS0 and CS1 since students voluntarily split themselves into two tracks called "less comfortable" and "more comfortable", respectively.)

Re: Python is now the most popular introductory language at top U.S. universities

#169

Post by blahedo »

pgbovine wrote: post #136
blahedo wrote: post #75

This methodology is suspect, and the headline is extremely deceptive. Note that Guo has conflated CS0 (meaning: CS for non-majors) with CS1 (meaning: intro to CS major). He is upfront about this fact and he does it intentionally, but comments about "first officially-sanctioned exposure in college" and such make it sound like he's unaware that most CS majors do not ever take a CS0 course; and among instructors of CS,…

Author here. Thanks for your comments blahedo. I'm a bit short on time right now, but I will convert some parts of this response into more coherent form and edit my article accordingly to clarify. I'll address each of your paragraphs in turn: 1.) Re: CS0 vs. CS1. Like you mentioned, I was very upfront about the methodology for this analysis. And I am very aware that most CS majors do not ever take a CS0 course. But p…

Thanks for responding! Do you still have in your notes the breakdown for each course whether it's CS0 or CS1? That would be good to put into the table in some form so the rest of us can make our own judgements about what that might mean. I don't disagree it's important, for many of the reasons you mention; I only really disagree with its characterisation as a majority intro language.

Indeed, I expect that when they're broken out, Python will be the overwhelming top choice for CS0, and a respectable second in CS1; but then, that's not as big a change as you might think. I'd be surprised if Java was ever a majority or even a plurality in CS0 courses. One subgroup of what you're calling CS0---the ones focussed on programming, often called a "service" course and targeted at engineering and science majors---have long been using things like C or Matlab, and never really had a strong movement towards Java. The other subgroup, what I'd call the "true" CS0 (i.e. based on what the ACM/IEEE curriculum guidelines used to call CS0) may have had no programming at all, or if they did, a short unit in a relatively lightweight language, certainly not Java.

Basically, the things that make for a good language in either kind of non-majors course are not always the same as what makes for a good language in a intro-for-majors course. That doesn't make the non-majors course unimportant and it doesn't mean that decisions are made hastily, but it's still not super helpful to conflate the two.

Re: Python is now the most popular introductory language at top U.S. universities

#170

Post by andrewfong »

yminsky wrote: post #153
pgbovine wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, will look into those and update accordingly. However, Harvard CS51 doesn't count as CS1 since CS50 is already its CS1 course. (But please correct me if I'm wrong.)

I would have thought cs50 is a cs0 course, and cs51 is the cs1. cs50 is the concentrators-and-non-concentrators course that's all flash and fun. What do you think is the cs0 at Harvard? As for your point about Penn's CS120, I guess I don't fully understand the criterion. From the way you described it, CS120 seems like a CS1 course: not for someone who has had zero programming, but the very first course taken by most…

I'm not sure how you define CS0, but my understanding is that there are now three introductory CS courses at Harvard: CS1, CS50, and CS51. Note that I graduated in 2007, so my understanding may be dated.

CS1 is intended for non-concentrators or people with very little prior CS experience.

CS50 is the standard intro course that most CS concentrators (or people considering CS as a concentration) take. Although it's taken by non-concentrators, most of the non-concentrators taking the course do so because they're in some field that has a lot of exposure to programming (e.g. Applied Math).

CS51 is the "advanced" intro course and is usually not the first CS course a CS concentrator takes, if for no other reason that it's not offered until the spring semester.

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