From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.5-pre1 (2020-06-20) on ip-172-31-74-118.ec2.internal X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.0 required=3.0 tests=BAYES_20 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.5-pre1 Date: 31 Jul 93 03:13:08 GMT From: slinky.cs.nyu.edu!slinky.cs.nyu.edu!nobody@nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) Subject: Re: Are 'best' universities being targeted for Ada9X Message-ID: <23co04$a72@schonberg.cs.nyu.edu> List-Id: While I agree one should not overemphasize the role of a particular language as an initial teaching language in the first programming course, one should also not make the mistake of underestimating the influence of the particular language chosen. I was amazed at the time by the reaction in the US to EWD's letter on "gotos considered harmful". I am sure that EWD did not think he was saying something profound or new, because anyone who was exposed to Algol-60 at the time knew perfectly well that it was obvious that the use of gotos should be minimized. The storm that it caused in the US was I think directly related to the comparative prevalence of FORTRAN as a first teaching language, and to typical programmers trained in FORTRAN, the idea of not using gotos was indeed novel, as was (much more importantly) the notion of microstructure in programs, which was the underlying issue.