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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

#321

Post by EpicEng »

lmm wrote: post #79
EpicEng wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who cares? If I'm a teacher I don't want to have to update material extensively every semester / year because the language is changing rapidly. Three are plenty of good, stable languages to use.

Java is about as stable as it gets; that foreach syntax is ten years old . And if your teaching material stuck to the old-style syntax it wouldn't be wrong , it would still work, it's just not as readable as the new style.

Yes, all languages change over time, butrust is still in its infancy and things have not yet settled. You really don't see the difference?

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

#322

Post by thedufer »

theaeolist wrote: post #272
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…

>(both array and linked-list based) How sad, not that you only do array and linked-list implementation of data types but that you think this is an exhaustive list. Inductive data types?

> stacks and queues (both array and linked-list based)

If you don't drop context that's a perfectly reasonable thing to say.

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

#323

Post by brudgers »

cfqycwz wrote: post #197
brudgers wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If programming language selection for introductory university courses was based on pedagogical research on introductory computer science courses, I suspect Scheme would be nearly universal given its roots and nearly forty year track record. But that's not how languages have typically been selected for 15 years or so. The direct vocational skills argument has held much more sway.

Does anybody here know of any resources where I might read up on best practices in CS pedagogy? I'm very interested in helping to reform my university's intro-level CS program.

Best practices differ from context to context. MIT switched from Scheme to Python because a large segment of students in 6.001 were not necessarily going into computer science and were there as because of a common core curriculum. Does it really make sense to teach such people to write language interpreters in an introductory course?

But every place isn't MIT, nor is every course a common core requirement for a college or department with diverse majors. Does a civil engineering student really need to implement lazy evaluation?

Felleisen's paper and subsequent book as well as the work of the PLT group show the current state of Scheme as a pedagogical language.

http://www.cs.brown.edu/~sk/Publications/Papers/Published/ff...

http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/matthias/HtDP2e/

http://racket-lang.org/learning.html

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

#324

Post by niix »

It's not surprising to me that Python has become the most popular intro language at universities. For someone who went a school with a poor computer science program, Python was a saving grace and landed me my first job as a developer. Unfortunately the school I went to did not have any courses on Python so I took it up in my free time.

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

#325

Post by hnriot »

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…

the most surprising thing I read was "Many of our students have never programmed with a text editor before" - what kind of CS students haven't tried programming before with a text editor?

I find that incredible. Long before I got to university I was been programming by myself with whatever editor I could find, edt, vi etc

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

#326

Post by ommunist »

krallja wrote: post #219
ommunist wrote: post #198

So Python is the new BASIC. Being widely introduced in the universities, could be the mark of ageing and obsoleteness. Since the university is normally teaching something very irrelevant to the real life, shouldn't the student look around for that emerging tech that will bring him a job in 5 years from now?

BASIC was taught in universities the year it was introduced.

And it became irrelevant in 5 years or so.

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

#327

Post by hnriot »

hans0l074 wrote: post #251
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…

I do not know any Python (yet) - and my comment is probably off-topic. I spent a fall semester at Northeastern U, Boston in '97 and took a graduate course in Data Structures which was taught in C. I loved this course and finished top of the class (It helped that I was already familiar with C from an undergrad engg course). I fell in love with C. Implementing dequeues, linked lists, trees etc. with C was a pleasure -…

"we have ten weeks to take people who may have never programmed by typing text into an editor and teach them enough CS and programming that they can implement their own hashmap in Python"

that seems utterly pointless to me.

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

#328

Post by sand500 »

candeira wrote: post #286
hans0l074 wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not know any Python (yet) - and my comment is probably off-topic. I spent a fall semester at Northeastern U, Boston in '97 and took a graduate course in Data Structures which was taught in C. I loved this course and finished top of the class (It helped that I was already familiar with C from an undergrad engg course). I fell in love with C. Implementing dequeues, linked lists, trees etc. with C was a pleasure -…

Our unit is a first year unit, and runs for twelve weeks. This means that we have ten weeks to take people who may have never programmed by typing text into an editor and teach them enough CS and programming that they can implement their own hashmap in Python and reason about its big O performance in one week, start programming in MIPS assembly the next week, and implement function calls in assembly and reason about…

Why does your data structure course cover assembly? I am just curious because in my school, they teach assembly bottom up, starting from digital logic and transistors and eventually get to C.

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

#329

Post by gaius »

zo1 wrote: post #295
hans0l074 wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not know any Python (yet) - and my comment is probably off-topic. I spent a fall semester at Northeastern U, Boston in '97 and took a graduate course in Data Structures which was taught in C. I loved this course and finished top of the class (It helped that I was already familiar with C from an undergrad engg course). I fell in love with C. Implementing dequeues, linked lists, trees etc. with C was a pleasure -…

Most of that article is rendered moot with this section: " Now, I freely admit that programming with pointers is not needed in 90% of the code written today, and in fact, it's downright dangerous in production code. OK. That's fine. And functional programming is just not used much in practice. Agreed. But it's still important for some of the most exciting programming jobs. " Pretty much saying that everything he just…

Yes it's funny, these places are teaching Python for the same reason they taught Java: it's "easy" and will get you a job. Yet we slate Java-schools, and cheer Python because it's trendy.

The truth is, universities shouldn't care what industry does, because "real-world" computing is more about fashion than it is about any sort of science. And if you do it right people can learn any language they need (case in point, I learnt FORTRAN at college, now I do Python for a living and OCaml as a hobbyist).

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

#330

Post by [deleted] »

gaius wrote: post #329
zo1 wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of that article is rendered moot with this section: " Now, I freely admit that programming with pointers is not needed in 90% of the code written today, and in fact, it's downright dangerous in production code. OK. That's fine. And functional programming is just not used much in practice. Agreed. But it's still important for some of the most exciting programming jobs. " Pretty much saying that everything he just…

Yes it's funny, these places are teaching Python for the same reason they taught Java: it's "easy" and will get you a job. Yet we slate Java-schools, and cheer Python because it's trendy. The truth is, universities shouldn't care what industry does, because "real-world" computing is more about fashion than it is about any sort of science. And if you do it right people can learn any language they need (case in point,…

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