z*******n
发帖数: 1034 | 1 当年cnyang说中国的本科生最好，一堆骂的
July 08, 2014
Python bumps off Java as top learning language
Eight out of the top 10 universities now use Python to introduce programming
, a researcher has found
By Joab Jackson | IDG News Service
Print|2 Comments
inShare9
Python has surpassed Java as the top language used to introduce U.S.
students to programming and computer science, according to a recent survey
posted by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).
Eight of the top 10 computer science departments now use Python to teach
coding, as well as 27 of the top 39 schools, indicating that it is the most
popular language for teaching introductory computer science courses,
according to Philip Guo, a computer science researcher who compiled the
survey for ACM.
[ Work smarter, not harder -- download the Developers' Survival Guide from
InfoWorld for all the tips and trends programmers need to know. | Keep up
with the latest developer news with InfoWorld's Developer World newsletter. ]
The three largest, most popular online class providers -- Coursera, edX and
Udacity -- also offer introductory programming courses in Python, Guo found.
Python has been growing in popularity in the educational realm for at least
the past few years, though this survey is the first to show it has eclipsed
Java, which has been the dominant teaching language for the past decade, Guo
said in a blog post about his survey.
Guo admitted that he is a Python enthusiast -- he has developed a popular
tool, called Online Python Tutor, to teach programming.
Sensing the rise of Python's popularity as a teaching aid, Guo surveyed
introductory computer science courses at the top 39 U.S. universities, as
ranked each year by U.S. News and World Report.
Java is frequently used in high school advanced courses, so the transition
to Java in college is a natural one for students. A number of universities,
however, have switched to Python from Java, and others offer both -- Java
for computer science students and Python to teach programming skills for
noncomputer science majors.
In order to prepare students for the working world, most schools use a
language for novices that is widely used in industry. This is how C++ and
Java came to supplant Pascal, a popular language for teaching programming in
the 1980s.
Python possesses a mix of qualities that makes it a good candidate for
universities. It has a simpler syntax than Java or C++, allowing novices to
start writing programs almost immediately. At the same time, it can be
scaled up for heavy industrial usage -- it is widely used in the financial
community for data analysis, for instance.
Although informal, such a survey can be valuable, in that the language used
to teach computer science can influence how students will come to view
programming in their professional years, Guo said. Surveying the top
universities can also reveal broader trends in education.
Other popular languages for teaching include MatLab, a mathematically
oriented language often used to introduce scientists and engineers to
programming. MatLab, however, seems to be increasingly supplanted by Java.
Older, and arguably more-difficult-to-learn, languages such as C and C++ are
still used as well, though increasingly they are being taught alongside
Java and Python.
Also seemingly ebbing in influence are functional programming languages
based on Scheme, which have long held sway at a small but ardent number of
computer science departments. Schools such as the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology and University of California, Berkeley, however, have phased out
Scheme in favor of Python.
Joab Jackson covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news
for The IDG News Service. Follow Joab on Twitter at @Joab_Jackson. Joab's e
-mail address is J**********[email protected] |
|
