Is it possible to teach several languages/paradigms at once?

Question

If you had the opportunity to teach new students how to program for a year, what would you teach? I've always found that a multi-paradigm approach to teaching programming works best, but is it too much for first-year students? Is it better for a student to be great at one or good at 3-5?

At the moment I am looking to help tutor students on the following:

• x86 Assembly Language
• C
• Haskell
• Java
• Perl
• C++
• Prolog

At the moment these students are only exposed to some very basic Java, so my theory is that these students would be able to expand further from here far better than they would with a basic understanding of just one language.

Please note that the question is not whether students can handle it, because a simple look at the programmes at the top universities show that they can, but whether it is advisable to those not at the top universities to focus on knowing as much as possible. It's not necessarily about knowing a language well, but giving students the ability to pick up and choose the right language for the job, and to become proficient in it as their studies continue.

Answer 1

I think that depends on how much programming experience they have already. If they are just starting out, then teaching them lots of paradigms might be overwhelming. If they already have a solid grounding, then teaching them several different languages is probably a good idea. I'd also include a data-driven language like ML in there, as it's very different from our normal imperative programming paradigms.

QuantumPete

Answer 2

I think beginning students would benefit more by concentrating on a single language. I don't think that learning multiple languages helps much until one develops basic programming skills.

I also don't think it is reasonable to think that beginning students would be able to get "good" at 3-5 languages in their first year, unless your definition of "good" is very broad.

But, having said that, it would be valuable to give them some exposure to other languages. I wouldn't try to get them to learn the other languages, but showing them some alternate ways of expressing algorithms would be beneficial.

The good students will be able teach themselves other programming languages if they get solid fundamentals and some exposure to alternatives.

Answer 3

I'd add to QuantumPeter's response that what you're going for is giving them exposure to concepts and practices. You aren't going to be able to produce great programmers in a classroom setting over the course of a single year, even if you narrow your focus to a single language.

Unless your students are exceptional (and you're a brilliant teacher), there's just too much practical ground to cover. However, you can produce programmers who are competent and ready to acquire experience. So I would agree with QuantumPete that for those who have never programmed, focus on one traditional imperative language for a year, so they learn how to begin to "think" like a programmer. For those who have this basic competency, give them enough exposure to other things that they could "jump in" to a project and start learning more. The variety should help to keep them interested and foster that desire to go out and learn more.

Answer 4

What's the goal here? Exposure to several languages or fluency? That is the question you need to nail down right away because time is a pretty precious commodity and you simply aren't likely to become fluent in 3-5 of them in a year unless that is all you do and then, I'm still really skeptical. But if the goal is to provide a survey of different programming constructs and use the various languages to demonstrate them, then that might work. I took a class in college where we did a survey of three languages and while I wasn't an expert in any of them at semester's end, I did get a pretty good idea about the topics we were really learning - at the time it was recursion, pointers, some algorithms, memory.

If your goal is fluency and having a technology where they're useful, then I'd stick to one. Pick one that covers as many of the bases as you'd like to address and then you can always do a little "aside" piece about something the chosen language doesn't cover completely or as well as you'd like.

Just my two cents.

Answer 5

Assembly language is the best case of imperative programming, Haskell is the fine example of functional programming and the prologue is good for the logical programming. So they should be tought at least superficially. Maybe Smalltalk are better than a C++ for showing basic OOP principle. And I don't see any profits in learning C, Java or Perl on the first year. IMHO these languages should be tought in a separate courses.

Answer 6

I think you're trying to do too many things at once. Try teaching them just one-or-two languages, and give hints that there are other paradigms out there.

E.g. if you're teaching an OO language, you will probably want to teach some simple design patterns. You could then say, "Of course, most of these patterns are just ways to wedge Functional idioms into an OO language." Give a minimal introduction to Haskell -- just enough to show what you meant -- and then move on.

Answer 7

You can show several languages to demonstrate common programming practices or techniques, but if the goal is to learn programming, I would pick one language to concentrate on. Occasionally show snippets of other languages, but make it clear you are showing a different language. Once they have learned one language, the syntax of the others will be easy for them to learn.

Answer 8

Yes, in fact, in most typical College Computer Science programs, there is a core class called "Programming Languages" where a survey of various programming language paradigms & implementations is done.

Among other things we covered the concept, such as:

• static versus dynamic scoping
• type systems, i.e. weakly typed versus strongly typed variables, inferred types, etc.
• compiled versus interpreted languages
• object oriented design
• functional programming
• aspect oriented programming

Answer 9

I would suggest that one should start with functional programming to get the basic ideas, then move quickly to something more "cool" like programming in e.g. seaside to get them using OO without really realising, and doing some imperative programming.

From there you can either get students to be better at using the skills they have, comparing the approaches available, understanding efficiency, etc, or move them to some other paradigms, so that they at least know what is out there.

Answer 10

I taught programming languages for 8 years at a big-name school. This was not for intro students, but I found that in one semester I could make pretty good functional programmers out of them, and they'd learn a little dynamic OO in smalltalk/ruby style. That plus some technical material on programming-language theory was plenty for one term.

I think if I had a whole year for beginning students I'd spent a semester teaching Lua and a semester teaching C. The Lua group would get a little functional programming; the C group would understand pointer arithmetic and what the machine actually does. But that's speculation; the preceding paragraph is based on N years of experience.

The advanced PL students have tended to become successful practioners: Microsoft, Google and startups (including most of the single-digit employees at facebook) are popular choices.

Answer 11

Warning: Python is my hammer of choice.

If it were me, I'd teach the course in Python. It has a simple syntax, good library support, a great "beginner's" IDE/debugger in IDLE, and a large community with good documentation.

In this case, though, one of the better factors is going to be that Python is reasonably good at many, many programming styles. Not perfect, mind you, but good enough to create a firm base in imperative and OO and cover a lot of the concepts of functional programming, as well as supporting a handful of more obscure types as well, without having to switch languages.

Or, too put it simply, Don't Repeat Yourself. :)

Answer 12

Possibly a more interesting question is "Is it possible to learn several languages" at once. I remember learning Fortran77 and Ada83 at the same time as an undergrad and finding it very difficult to separate the (obviously very different) syntaxes. If it is the students first attempt at programming, I suspect learning more than one at once would be difficult.