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Don’t most university courses worldwide start with Java - or use Java as a mainstay? There are practical benefits: everyone knows it, it’s easy to learn (the la

Don’t most university courses worldwide start with Java - or use Java as a mainstay? There are practical benefits: everyone knows it, it’s easy to learn (the language, while the library is straightforward too), and there’s a huge ecosystem. ...and it’s OOP. Back when I was finishing HS and touring ~5-6 different universities - every single one said they used Java - one said they were about to switch to teaching most of their first two years using JavaScript (this was a few years before NodeJS was even released so the notion of using JavaScript as a serious didactical language wasn’t taken seriously by me.

p1esk 7y ago
In my school currently they offer intro to programming in Python. For those who already know the basics the first course is using C. The next one is C++ and after that Java.
repsilat 7y ago
It rings true to me, at least in CS and especially software engineering. In mathematics, physics and "real engineering" departments I haven't seen it at all, though, and my experience may date me. It was my first semester of university programming in '05. Anecdotally, I wasn't as bothered by "public static void main string args" as I was by - Starting execution in MyClass.main, - Instantiating a MyClass, then - Calling MyClass.run(). That took some head-scratching. It's an argument against Java as an introductory language, but not much of one, because "Just ignore that bit until CS102" (or forever if you're never going to do another CS paper) actually works pretty well.
- DaiPlusPlus 7y ago
  > It rings true to me, at least in CS and especially software engineering. In mathematics, physics and "real engineering" departments I haven't seen it at all, though, and my experience may date me. Ah - yes. My friends at uni doing physics said they had to learn C++ - but only enough to write simple C-style programs and using simple classes without going into OOP design, design patterns, and large-scale concerns (I guess because they were all using some physics tool, and I understand it's good for interfacing with Fortran too). My friends doing EE (excluding those doing embedded work) said they all had to do Matlab, some friends doing mathematics reported the same. EE people also said they did some C too.

p1esk 7y ago

In my school currently they offer intro to programming in Python. For those who already know the basics the first course is using C. The next one is C++ and after that Java.

repsilat 7y ago

It rings true to me, at least in CS and especially software engineering. In mathematics, physics and "real engineering" departments I haven't seen it at all, though, and my experience may date me. It was my first semester of university programming in '05. Anecdotally, I wasn't as bothered by "public static void main string args" as I was by - Starting execution in MyClass.main, - Instantiating a MyClass, then - Calling MyClass.run(). That took some head-scratching. It's an argument against Java as an introductory language, but not much of one, because "Just ignore that bit until CS102" (or forever if you're never going to do another CS paper) actually works pretty well.

DaiPlusPlus 7y ago
> It rings true to me, at least in CS and especially software engineering. In mathematics, physics and "real engineering" departments I haven't seen it at all, though, and my experience may date me. Ah - yes. My friends at uni doing physics said they had to learn C++ - but only enough to write simple C-style programs and using simple classes without going into OOP design, design patterns, and large-scale concerns (I guess because they were all using some physics tool, and I understand it's good for interfacing with Fortran too). My friends doing EE (excluding those doing embedded work) said they all had to do Matlab, some friends doing mathematics reported the same. EE people also said they did some C too.