[geeks] Introductory programming language?

[Phil Stracchino]

On 08/31/11 00:33, Dr Robert Pasken wrote:
> Anything but python, based on the Science, Technology, Engineering and 
> Mathematics (STEM) departments experience at my institution. At the 
> insistence of the CS department we tried to use python as the intro 
> language for STEM majors. The net result was a lot of very drain bramaged 
> students who were able to write simple programs before taking the course 
> and after taking the course refused to do any programming at all. We 
> switched over to a mixture of MatLab and C for STEM majors and it the 
> results are dramatic. The MatLab protion of the course gives the students 
> the fundamentals of programming with nearly instantaneous feedback. They 
> quickly pickup the basics and are able to solve relatively complex 
> problems before mid-semester. Two typical problems are determining the 
> necessary lengths of muffler pipes to silence a car engine via 
> constructive/destructive interference and a numerical weather prediction 
> model based on the Barotropic Vorticity equation. Both problems run in the 
> range of 200 lines of matlab code. After mid-terms they switch over to C 
> to show the advantages of a compiler versus an interpreter. By the end of 
> the semester they can solve problems from their major field AND know they 
> right kind of tool for the job.


Sounds like win-win.


-- 
  Phil Stracchino, CDK#2     DoD#299792458     ICBM: 43.5607, -71.355
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