On Tue, Feb 1, 2022 at 2:40 PM Clem Cole wrote: > Dan - thanks. > Sure thing. By the way: the thing I was thinking about earlier that was so biting towards OOP was an earlier version of Harper's post, in which he writes, "Object-oriented programming is eliminated entirely from the introductory curriculum, because it is both anti-modular and anti-parallel by its very nature, and hence unsuitable for a modern CS curriculum." https://web.archive.org/web/20110321004746/https://existentialtype.wordpress.com/2011/03/15/teaching-fp-to-freshmen/ (How's _that_ for an academic glove-slap?) It would appear that language was softened to read "unsuitable for our purposes" sometime in 2013, and then that rather inflammatory clause was removed entirely by early March, 2015. I had read the original and felt some schadenfreude. - Dan C. On Tue, Feb 1, 2022 at 2:10 PM Dan Cross wrote: > >> On Tue, Feb 1, 2022 at 1:49 PM Clem Cole 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. >> >>