Waterloo's first year CS, now in Scheme flavour

[Tony]

It has been announced a year ago that UW will be dropping Java in favour of Scheme, C, and Python.

For those who don't yet subscribe to the /blog (do it here, it will be a while before it's better integrated with the forums), Prof. Prabhakar Ragde has posted a guide to what's gonna be happening in Fall 2008.

Quote:

Scheme is a functional programming language with simple syntax, which permits the course to focus on ideas instead of language details, and gives the students a simple model of the meaning of a program.

[Robert]

What about Software Engineering? Same deal?

[Tony]

I don't know, you'd have to check what classes SEs take in the first year.

[Prabhakar Ragde]

No. Software engineers will take two new courses specialized for SE, which will be fairly conventional CS1/2 courses using C++. --PR

[Yukie.ai]

so what my friends told me are totally true T_T""

*cross fingers
just hope the final project is NOT the same >__> (aka, create an algorithm for addition w/o using the build-in "+" convention or something along the line T_T"")

[Prabhakar Ragde]

"Final project" in what? --PR

[Yukie.ai]

1st semester cs?

not sure about the details, since friends were only forced to take cs (you know, math faculty)

[Tony]

If you were to read the article, you'd know that there are three different "1st term CS" classes offered.

[Prabhakar Ragde]

None of the first-year CS courses at UW have had a "final project" for several years now. Typically there are weekly assignments with five to eight questions, plus a bonus.

Thinking about how to implement built-in functions is a technique we use in the Scheme-based courses to make sure students understand the specification and implications (e.g. for efficiency). Addition is one such exercise (implement it using only add1, sub1, and test-for-zero functions). It's worth doing this in other languages as well (e.g. figuring out how to do built-in string manipulation procedures yourself). --PR