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I remember having a conversation with the professor who ran the "intro to programming for engineers" at my undergrad, where they spent half a semester on C and

I remember having a conversation with the professor who ran the "intro to programming for engineers" at my undergrad, where they spent half a semester on C and half a semester on matlab, in that order. I remember saying that I thought they should do things in the other order (as you're suggesting here), and I remember him saying that they'd tried that, and being very emphatic that it did not work, that trying to teach C to students already used to matlab was a disaster.

im_down_w_otp 10y ago
That might just be the choice of MATLAB as the alternate pole. Because that stands out to me as strange for several reasons... starting with it's not really general purpose at all and it is a relatively complex environment in and of itself which has nothing at all to do with programming or computer science. That method seems akin to expecting a bunch of students who learned Photoshop for web layouts to have an obvious progression to linear algebra or analog signal processing.
- neutronicus 10y ago
  Well, this was "intro to programming for engineers" so every engineering specialty (mechanical, biomedical, aerospace, you name it) took this class, and its main purpose was to ensure that they'd be MATLAB-literate for subsequent courses, with C-literacy kind of a bonus that'd serve them well if they wandered into some area where it was necessary.
  - planteen 10y ago
    Was this Georgia Tech by chance? When I was there, the "full" intro to CS for CS, EE, CmpE was in Scheme. But for all other engineers, it was MATLAB with no C.
    - neutronicus 10y ago
      Nah, Michigan.
      - R_haterade 10y ago
        Surprised it wasn't UT Austin. You just can't make it through modern engineering if you can't use _matlab_, and it's easy if you've already finished C. Old YTMND jokes aside, I did it this way too, and didn't learn to enjoy computing for a long time after that.

im_down_w_otp 10y ago

That might just be the choice of MATLAB as the alternate pole. Because that stands out to me as strange for several reasons... starting with it's not really general purpose at all and it is a relatively complex environment in and of itself which has nothing at all to do with programming or computer science. That method seems akin to expecting a bunch of students who learned Photoshop for web layouts to have an obvious progression to linear algebra or analog signal processing.

neutronicus 10y ago
Well, this was "intro to programming for engineers" so every engineering specialty (mechanical, biomedical, aerospace, you name it) took this class, and its main purpose was to ensure that they'd be MATLAB-literate for subsequent courses, with C-literacy kind of a bonus that'd serve them well if they wandered into some area where it was necessary.
- planteen 10y ago
  Was this Georgia Tech by chance? When I was there, the "full" intro to CS for CS, EE, CmpE was in Scheme. But for all other engineers, it was MATLAB with no C.
  - neutronicus 10y ago
    Nah, Michigan.
    - R_haterade 10y ago
      Surprised it wasn't UT Austin. You just can't make it through modern engineering if you can't use _matlab_, and it's easy if you've already finished C. Old YTMND jokes aside, I did it this way too, and didn't learn to enjoy computing for a long time after that.