Javascript, really? Why not Python?
JS is the new lingua franca, what C used to be.
And unlike C it is easy to get started programming in it. Thus a good choice for an intro language if you ask me.
Stanford dumps java as intro language
11–20 of 50 posts
Re: Stanford dumps java as intro language
#12I teach at Stanford though not in CS. I think this headline is a bit off. There is a CS 106J class that follows the CS 106A curriculum using JS instead of Java, but as far as I know, the CS 106A Java curriculum has not been tossed out for the academic calendar of 2017-2018 (syllabuses aren't up yet, so I can't confirm).
As the article states, CS 106J was spearheaded by Professor Roberts this past year. I would imagine it'd take some more time for it to become a curriculum that all of the profs teach, though JS is being used in several other CS classes. For example, CS 142: Web Applications, used to be taught with Rails:
https://web.stanford.edu/~ouster/cgi-bin/cs142-winter14/inde...
Now it's taught with MEAN (Mongo, Express, Angular, and Node): http://web.stanford.edu/class/cs142/info.html
Re: Stanford dumps java as intro language
#13I went to a completely unranked school, not even a CS major. But took Programming I anyway. It was for freshmen, and was in C++. IMO, for an intro language, you need either something close to the metal, so that students can work their way up the abstraction chain, or something very high-level with flexible constructs if it's desired to teach things from the algorithmic level. I also think that any dynamically typed l…
> IMO, for an intro language, you need either something close to the metal
Agreed. They aren't just learning to program but they are learning how computers work so the less abstraction the better.
On the plus side, I imagine this will be great for our salaries in 10-20 years.
Re: Stanford dumps java as intro language
#14I went to a completely unranked school, not even a CS major. But took Programming I anyway. It was for freshmen, and was in C++. IMO, for an intro language, you need either something close to the metal, so that students can work their way up the abstraction chain, or something very high-level with flexible constructs if it's desired to teach things from the algorithmic level. I also think that any dynamically typed l…
Disagree, I think it is the exact opposite. I say that as someone who did their CS education in the early 90s when that was the case. We used C for everything unless the class material implied something else. We got into the down and dirty details quite fast.
IMO that's the wrong way to do it. Using myself as an example it took me far longer to learn things like data structures than it should have. Why? Because I still hadn't wrapped my head around pointers. The fact that the two are coupled is an implementation detail IMO. It turned out that I never had a problem understanding the structures, I had trouble writing code which didn't segfault.
I'd prefer to see CS education start with the more theoretical constructs and then start diving towards the metal as the basic concepts are known. In other words, treat it more like computer science and less like computer engineering.
Re: Stanford dumps java as intro language
#15I've TA'd all of Stanford's intro programming classes, including the first course in programming CS 106A, so a few things:
- unlike a lot of other schools, CS 106A is mostly taken by non-majors (90-something percent of undergrads take at least one CS course before graduation, and for non-majors that means 106A)
- the follow up course, 106B, is in C++ and focuses on OOP, pointers, memory, data structures, etc.
- 106J was crafted as a replacement for 106A by in JS. It had limited enrollment, and word on the street is 106J's first offering this past spring was an experiment and it didn't go all that well, so who's to say if it'll still be around next year.
Maybe they should switch from Java to something hipster and trendy, but there's about 10+ years worth of assignments that will need to be rewritten, including autograding infrastructure for the 600-800 people who take it every quarter.
I personally feel like JS is an awful language with few opinions or guard rails, and thus a bad language to teach people who are looking for programming principles. It works for the web but I think for a course almost entirely consisting of non-majors it's not a good first language.
Re: Stanford dumps java as intro language
#16Javascript, really? Why not Python?
How could you pass up an opportunity to use npm, browersify and webpack?
Re: Stanford dumps java as intro language
#17I went to a completely unranked school, not even a CS major. But took Programming I anyway. It was for freshmen, and was in C++. IMO, for an intro language, you need either something close to the metal, so that students can work their way up the abstraction chain, or something very high-level with flexible constructs if it's desired to teach things from the algorithmic level. I also think that any dynamically typed l…
Disagree, I think it is the exact opposite. I say that as someone who did their CS education in the early 90s when that was the case. We used C for everything unless the class material implied something else. We got into the down and dirty details quite fast. IMO that's the wrong way to do it. Using myself as an example it took me far longer to learn things like data structures than it should have. Why? Because I sti…
I keep hearing that people have (or had) trouble understanding pointers. As someone who has never had that problem or met such a person, I am struggling to understand why...
Re: Stanford dumps java as intro language
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
Disagree, I think it is the exact opposite. I say that as someone who did their CS education in the early 90s when that was the case. We used C for everything unless the class material implied something else. We got into the down and dirty details quite fast. IMO that's the wrong way to do it. Using myself as an example it took me far longer to learn things like data structures than it should have. Why? Because I sti…
I keep hearing that people have (or had) trouble understanding pointers. As someone who has never had that problem or met such a person, I am struggling to understand why...
In retrospect I don't understand either. It's such a simple concept. But it really befuddled me for a while.
My suspicion is that since everything involved pointers in C, even things like string manipulation, it was just an extra layer of confusion in a sea of new to me stuff.
Re: Stanford dumps java as intro language
#19It's funnny how, when java first came out, everyone was writing applets and not doing a good job of it (incl myself). This was due to it being way easier to code and deploy as opposed to C/C++ at the time. This gave ppl the impression that java was slow, when in fact the code was terrible (and ms was constantly submarining sun).
Now I'm sitting here with 16GB of really terrible Javascript code running in my browser using 5% constantly of the fastest intel chip you can buy today. No one says it's slow probably because no one knows it's running.
If chrome and ff put a task in the process list with all the Javascript CPU usage I'm guessing things would be way different.
I really do think K&R C should be taught to university level students. It's important to understand pointers and mallocs, even if you don't use it often.