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By "school" you mean College or University I presume? (which is what most of the english speaking world calls them). Otherwise highschools are far more advanced

By "school" you mean College or University I presume? (which is what most of the english speaking world calls them). Otherwise highschools are far more advanced in the US then I am led to believe ;)

cstejerean 19y ago
Don't be fooled, high schools int he US are pretty terrible in general. Most of the math and science I covered in high school in the US I learned through 8th grade in Romania. But the AP level courses are great. The high school I attended taught C++ as the AP course (switched to Java the year after I took the course).
rms 19y ago
My relatively well-off public high school had an elective year long programming sequence that was half Pascal and the second half C++. Then, AP Computer Science was taught in C++. Right after I graduated, AP Computer Science switched to Java and my school started teaching C++ as the first programming language, then Java, then Java again for AP CS.
- michaelneale 19y ago
  Wow, that is impressive. Although, when I went to high school there was no Java (barely was C++, actually there was but no one really used it yet as it was a wacky pre processor for C). Pascal baby ! Interesting how pascal kind of quietly disappeared. It has the closest resemblence to the algol heritage that it came from.
  - rms 19y ago
    Yeah... hopefully there will eventually be a pedagogical movement to switch to python as a first language, C++ is definitely a little rough.
    - michaelneale 19y ago
      I agree. Python certainly has its quirks. But what I like about it is that it doesn't force OO or functional styles. You can "ease" into them. I like writing non OO python. Also with the significant whitespace, its great for teaching as it makes the code clear without syntactic noise. the only thing I find confusing is forgetting that there may be a global function to do what I want. eg len(array) as opposed to list.length (ruby). But that probably doesn't hurt in reality at all. The few books I have read on python are also excellent and approachable. Also you can do fun stuff with python (build GUIs etc) and do tangible stuff that makes teaching it more fun.
Goladus 19y ago
I used Pascal in high school, which was over 10 years ago. We did searching and sorting algorithms, linked lists, queues, and some other stuff I don't remember too well. Then I did it all again in college because they didn't accept AP credit unless you specifically complained and demanded to skip the introductory class. (Which wasn't a 6.001 equivalent)

By "school" you mean College or University I presume? (which is what most of the english speaking world calls them). Otherwise highschools are far more advanced in the US then I am led to believe ;)

cstejerean 19y ago

Don't be fooled, high schools int he US are pretty terrible in general. Most of the math and science I covered in high school in the US I learned through 8th grade in Romania. But the AP level courses are great. The high school I attended taught C++ as the AP course (switched to Java the year after I took the course).

rms 19y ago

My relatively well-off public high school had an elective year long programming sequence that was half Pascal and the second half C++. Then, AP Computer Science was taught in C++. Right after I graduated, AP Computer Science switched to Java and my school started teaching C++ as the first programming language, then Java, then Java again for AP CS.

michaelneale 19y ago
Wow, that is impressive. Although, when I went to high school there was no Java (barely was C++, actually there was but no one really used it yet as it was a wacky pre processor for C). Pascal baby ! Interesting how pascal kind of quietly disappeared. It has the closest resemblence to the algol heritage that it came from.
- rms 19y ago
  Yeah... hopefully there will eventually be a pedagogical movement to switch to python as a first language, C++ is definitely a little rough.
  - michaelneale 19y ago
    I agree. Python certainly has its quirks. But what I like about it is that it doesn't force OO or functional styles. You can "ease" into them. I like writing non OO python. Also with the significant whitespace, its great for teaching as it makes the code clear without syntactic noise. the only thing I find confusing is forgetting that there may be a global function to do what I want. eg len(array) as opposed to list.length (ruby). But that probably doesn't hurt in reality at all. The few books I have read on python are also excellent and approachable. Also you can do fun stuff with python (build GUIs etc) and do tangible stuff that makes teaching it more fun.

Goladus 19y ago

I used Pascal in high school, which was over 10 years ago. We did searching and sorting algorithms, linked lists, queues, and some other stuff I don't remember too well. Then I did it all again in college because they didn't accept AP credit unless you specifically complained and demanded to skip the introductory class. (Which wasn't a 6.001 equivalent)