[TUHS] ratfor vibe

Clem Cole clemc at ccc.com
Wed Feb 2 05:39:55 AEST 2022


Dan - thanks.
Clem

On Tue, Feb 1, 2022 at 2:10 PM Dan Cross <crossd at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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