UNIX/scripting/programming courses?

[dsr at tao.merseine.nu]

On Tue, Oct 11, 2005 at 11:24:28AM -0400, Jerry Feldman wrote:
> 
> In a more ideal world, I prefer a programming student be taught the 
> principles of programming possibly with another language. C and C++ are 
> difficult first programming languages. Pascal is probably better but no one 
> in their right mind would use Pascal any more :-)

Pascal is an excellent first language -- and that's pretty much
all it's good for, at this point. There's no reason not to teach
Pascal to beginners.

> Java might be a better first language today because it is both structured, 
> Object Oriented, and does not have some of the vagaries of C or the 
> complexity of C++. 

Most CS curricula seem to do this these days. I'm not sure it's
a good idea, because people then try to do things in Java as
well...

-dsr-