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

Post by crdoconnor » Tue, Jul 08, 2014, 2:49 PM UTC

jarrett wrote: post #309

crdoconnor wrote: post #196

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>While Python has a healthy web dev ecosystem, Ruby's feels much larger to me. What is there in, say, rails that would not be available for django?

It's not a Rails vs Django feature comparison that gives Rails the edge. Convergent evolution means they're pretty much on par with each other all the time. The difference is in the size of the ecosystem as a whole. The Ruby web dev world appears to have more (or more visible) participants. Which affects things like Stack Overflow, web-specific packages on Github, blog posts, etc. It's not an order-of-magnitude diffe…

Post by boomlinde » Tue, Jul 08, 2014, 3:01 PM UTC

brudgers wrote: post #35

_delirium wrote: post #23

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I've seen Processing used in some intro courses for that reason, because the time-to-interesting-experimentation is fairly low (similar to the goal of Logo in the '80s, which was my own first language, although I think Logo was much better as a programming language). I don't think it's a common first language in intro-CS programs, but there are a number of curricula being built around Processing outside the context o…

Processing is a good candidate because it allows a novice to make something interactive and interesting in very few lines of code. The downside is that they wind up typing things about which they understand nothing...e.g void setup {···} . And it's not like void will really make sense after two weeks. On the other hand, placing the mastery in the executing artifact, not the underlying code, might be a good thing.

Post by partomniscient » Tue, Jul 08, 2014, 3:11 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #124

klodolph wrote: post #119

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I think the intense focus on OOP is a problem, and it is symptomatic of teaching students Java as their first language. Just as if you learn BASIC first you love GOTO, if you learn Java first you love classes and think everything should be a class. What especially concerns me is that some people are interested in whether a program or language is object-oriented, and endeavor to make their programs more object-oriente…

> Just as if you learn BASIC first you love GOTO I learned BASIC first and started hating GOTO before I was even in my teens. Who likes GOTO, seriously? > The other problem is that the farther you get from being a freshman, the farther you get from understanding which concepts are necessary in an introductory curriculum. I don't know, the farther I've gotten from being a freshman, the broader my experience of other p…

Post by reycharles » Tue, Jul 08, 2014, 3:43 PM UTC

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…

Post by kaonashi » Tue, Jul 08, 2014, 4:17 PM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #240

pgbovine wrote: post #236

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English isn't very good at expressing set logic, and I'm no mathematician :) You can delete this sentence -- These students are more likely to be female or from underrepresented minority groups. -- and the meaning of the previous sentence remains unchanged. The key point is that CS0 is important for attracting people who didn't have prior background in computing and thus could have a latent interest in CS that would…

My question was slightly different - would the helping the group of people taking CS0 be less important if that group was comprised entirely of asian males? I couldn't tell if the sentence was meant to support your main argument ("we should help group X because lots of non-asian minorities") or if it was merely a curiosity that was irrelevant to the main argument ("ooh look, lots of non-asian minorities, statisticall…