On Wednesday, July 3, 2002, at 11:41  PM, Roger Whitney wrote:
> I think the reason objects and classes may be avoided in intro classes 
> is that the people who teach them think objects are too complex for 
> students.
>
I once asked Alan Kay what kind of language/programming should be taught 
in a first course in a University.  (Alan, please do correct me if I'm 
mis-remembering your answer.)  He suggested that students should NOT 
first be taught object-oriented programming.  Object-oriented 
programming is hard, on purpose, he said.  It's meant to produce good, 
reusable code.  That takes some discipline.

That doesn't mean that first-time students shouldn't program WITH 
objects.  E-toys are all about objects, and that makes life easier.  But 
E-toys-using students aren't dealing with class definitions and 
instance/class distinctions and all those other things that make 
object-oriented programs high-quality, but are fairly hard things to 
learn.

Alan's suggestion (which he re-iterated at the MM in CS Ed workshop, 
http://coweb.cc.gatech.edu/mmworkshop) is that a first programming 
course should be in multiple languages so that students don't latch on 
to only one way of thinking.  I've heard him propose assembly language 
and LISP as giving students two ends of a spectrum.

Mark