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Session 2632
A Quantitative Approach for Choosing a Procedural Programming Language in Freshman Programming
Thomas J. Cortina Polytechnic University
An important problem that colleges and universities continue to struggle with is the choice of programming language for the first programming course. During the summer of 1996, I ran an experiment to gain quantitative information concerning how well high-school students not familiar with programming adapt to four different procedural programming languages (Pascal, ADA95, C, and C++). The goal of this research is to determine if the choice of introductory programming language has any measurable effect on the learning ability of a typical student in the introductory programming course taught at a typical engineering school. Initial analysis indicates that students learning Pascal or C++ (without the use of objects) for the first time performed marginally better than students that learned ADA95 or C. However, student surveys indicate that several constructs used in ADA95 and C caused these introductory students to have more difficulty. By adjusting the presentation of these topics, the instructor can teach effectively in any of the four programming languages. This paper outlines the design and the results of the experiment, and future work that can extend these results.
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