Role of the C language in Current Computing Curricula Part 1 – Survey Analysis

In December 2006, an anonymous online survey was publicized on the various ACM mailing lists (SIGCSE, SIGITE). Its purpose was to determine the role of the C language in the various modern computing curricula (CS, IT...). This paper summarizes the results and stresses out the quantitative usage of this language in introductory and intermediate programming courses as well as in upper-level undergraduate courses (e.g. operating systems). We also present the qualitative reasons provided by our respondents for, or against, the adoption of the C language in these various courses. We then discuss these results and propose an analysis of when the C language might be most useful in the curriculum, how it should be introduced and what specific topics should be covered in such a re-designed “intermediate programming in C” course.