Programming Languages { Trends in Education

Programming languages play a central role in the computer science curriculum. Programming is of course a fundamental component of the curriculum, and the choice of languages in which students learn to program has a major impact, both on the way that they learn and on the programming skills that they will take into industry. The past has seen considerable tension between the educational sector, in which we prefer to teach clean`structured' languages, and the industrial sector, whose language preferences are more pragmatic. Today we see a convergence: object-oriented methods in general have emerged as the technology of choice in both sectors, and Java 1 in particular is a ne language to learn programming and a useful preparation for programming in other languages such as C or C++. A diierent but related issue is education about programming languages. This is often seen as a relatively specialized topic in the computer science curriculum. However, I believe that all software engineers derive both intellectual and practical beneets from this part of their education. Few software engineers ever write compilers and interpreters, but all use them routinely, and all beneet from an understanding of how their programming constructs are actually implemented. Even fewer software engineers ever design a language, but all will learn new languages throughout their careers, and an understanding of language concepts gives them an intellectual framework that facilitates eecient learning of new languages.