Language Tug-Of-War: Industry Demand and Academic Choice

This paper seeks to inform instructors responsible for designing introductory programming courses within a university setting. In particular, guidelines for choosing programming languages to be taught are presented. Information relevant to instructors of later programming courses is also presented. We ask the question: “are instructors of introductory programming courses wanting to teach industry demanded languages and if so, are they choosing the correct languages?” The guidelines produced to answer this question are based on a census of introductory programming teaching in Australian universities, coupled with a survey of employer demand based on newspaper job advertisements.