At 9:32 PM -0500 6/25/01, Bernard James POPE wrote:
... I think Miranda replaced Pascal as the first language taught to students, but that was a long time ago and I wasn't here at the time.
The switch from imperative to functional must be the hardest, both politically and pedagogically. Does anyone recall how it came about?
... The use of Haskell is filtering up through the later-year subjects, as both staff and students become more comfortable with it. I think that many of our students do not appreciate some of the strong features of declarative programming until third or fourth year when they are faced with larger (more difficult) programming tasks.
I've had several students from my Haskell-based first course (i.e., subject) thank me later on, but the vast majority, lacking reinforcement, seem to lose their ability to think functionally.
There is still a conception amongst some of the students that FP is not really part of "Real World" programming, and that it is merely of interest to academics.
If I could say that about my fellow academics, I would be delighted! Thanks for the enlightenment. Is my envy showing? --Ham ------------------------------------------------------------------ Hamilton Richards, PhD Department of Computer Sciences Senior Lecturer Mail Code C0500 512-471-9525 The University of Texas at Austin Taylor Hall 5.138 Austin, Texas 78712-1188 ham@cs.utexas.edu hrichrds@swbell.net ------------------------------------------------------------------