D in the ix magazine about "programming today"

[Sean Kelly]

dsimcha Wrote:
> 
> Yes, but you were probably exceptionally talented and/or motivated.  From
> experiences I have had getting friends through programming 101, I believe that,
> when people teach programming, they tend to take for granted some very basic
> concepts such as variable assignment, flow control and nesting.  The first
> programming language should be one that strikes a balance between allowing the
> teaching of these basic concepts on the one hand and not being a completely
> useless toy language on the other.

I'm not sure I agree.  Intro courses in the sciences are often intended to weed out the people who won't be able to handle later material.  I'm all for making the courses more interesting to keep students motivated (ACM Communications this month is all about integrating gaming topics into the core CS curriculum), but less interested in trying to make the courses easier.  If the problem is simply one of explaining typed variables to someone with a maths background, that's somewhat of a different problem.