[TUHS] ratfor vibe

Dan Cross crossd at gmail.com
Wed Feb 2 05:10:09 AEST 2022


On Tue, Feb 1, 2022 at 1:49 PM Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:

> [snip]
> FWIW:  Through the 60s, the early and into the later 70s, CMU used to call
> its 15-104 "Intro to Computer Programming" and was based on batch (card)
> computing using FTN4, later WATFIV.  They used a number of books.  The book
> I had was from Waterloo and other than being blue and black in color, I
> remember little from it - since I already knew how and the TA let me take
> 'self-taught' by turning in assignments/taking the tests without going to
> class.  Like Freshman Physics and Calc, all intro science and engineering
> majors were required to take it however, since the engineering depts were
> sure what you would see when you graduated was FTN based code [which was
> probably true for the more pure Science types].   Much later (many years
> after I left)  the CS Dept finally convinced Mat Sci, Chem E and Mech E to
> allow the course to be taught using Pascal.  I think they use either Java
> or Python now, but I haven't checked.
>

There was a bit of a stir about 10 years ago when CMU switched from Java (I
think?) to Python and SML for introductory computer science education. I
remember reading a report at the time, which I _think_ is this:
http://reports-archive.adm.cs.cmu.edu/anon/2010/CMU-CS-10-140.pdf

Though perhaps not, because it _really_ bit into Java and the whole OOP
thing.

Robert Harper had a blog post that I found interesting about exposing
freshmen to functional programming:
https://existentialtype.wordpress.com/2011/03/15/teaching-fp-to-freshmen/

        - Dan C.
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