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Two computing practitioners from an Ada shop in New York, Dr. R.B.K Dewar and Dr. E. Schonberg, who are also professors emeritus at New York University, have recently slammed Java as a first programming language. Their article has received quite a bit of attention and created wide discussion.
I think they are completely barking up the wrong tree.
Comments
dzonelurker replied ago:
Doesn't address the problems of Java as a first programming language.
planetmcd replied ago:
I disagree, it points out that the problem Dewar and Schonberg see, poorly trained Computer Scientists, is not a function of their first language, but of a poor curriculum and that a well designed curriculum will introduce the concepts missed by learning Java in another course. Java is a good foundation language for understanding object oriented languages. It is not a language that teaches you everything, but then nothing is. And while a percentage of people who do understand Java, will not be able to get the other concepts, those people may not be on track to be computer scientists to begin with (and if they are they'll be weeded out later). With a more difficult first language, you needlessly screen people from the less rigorous tracks that they were interested in to begin with.
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