IT’S ALL IN THE LANGUAGE (Yet Another Look at the Choice of Programming Language for Teaching Computer Science)

The choice of which programming language to use in introductory computer science courses is guaranteed to spark debate in the computer science community. Programming languages used in computer science instruction have followed various trends or fads within the computing industry. The language choice has often been between languages which are currently in wide use by industry for software production. While it is true that computer science education has a responsibility to achieve a balance between providing training in current practices within the field and core concepts and theory, it is felt that computer science education should not be overly influenced by popular trends when choosing a programming language to use in the teaching of introductory computer science. This paper offers other criteria for the choice of language together with examples. This paper appears in the Journal of Computing in Small Colleges, Volume 12, Number 4, Pages 58-74, March 1997. Copyright c ©1997 by the Consortium for Computing in Small Colleges. Permission to copy without fee all or part of this material is granted provided that the copies are not made or distributed for direct commercial advantage, the CCSC copyright notice and the title of the publication and its date appear, and notice is given that copying is by permission of the Consortium for Computing in Small Colleges. To copy otherwise, or to republish, requires a fee and/or specific permission. The paper was presented at the CCSC South-Central Conference, April 11, 1997, San Antonio, Texas.