An Objective Comparison of Languages for Teaching Introductory Programming

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An Objective Comparison of Languages for
Teaching Introductory Programming

• Linda Mannila, TUCS ÅAU, Fin
• Michael de Raadt, USQ, Aus

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Motivation

• Emotive debate
• Instructors reasons
• Previous comparisons
• Dated, incomplete
• Not pedagogically focussed

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Goal

• Objective comparison
• Pedagogically focussed
• Useful for instructors to make informed decisions
• Based on design decisions of language creators

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Language Creators

• Seymour Papert (LOGO)
• Niklaus Wirth (Pascal)
• Guido van Rossum (Python)
• Bertrand Meyer (Eiffel)

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Criteria

• Learning
• Suitable for teaching
• Can be used to apply physical analogies
• Offers a general framework
• Freely and easily available

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Criteria

• Design and Environment
• Interactive, facilitating rapid code development
• Promotes writing correct programs
• Allows problems to be solved in "bite-sized
  chunks"
• Provides a seamless development environment

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Criteria

• Support and availability
• Supportive user community
• Open source, so anyone can contribute to its
  development
• Consistently supported across environments
• Freely and easily available
• Supported with good teaching material

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Criteria

• Beyond Introductory Programming
• Not only used in education
• Extensible
• Reliable and efficient
• Not an example of the QWERTY phenomena

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Comparison
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Conclusions

• Python and Eiffel are most suitable
• Java close behind
• Results useful for language developers

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Discussion

• Objective?
• Equal weighting?
• Other languages?
• Are the criteria applied correctly?
• Paradigm important?
• Scripting languages?