1957-2007: 50 Years of Higher Order Programming Languages

Fifty years ago one of the greatest breakthroughs in computer programming and in the history of computers happened – the appearance of FORTRAN, the first higher-order programming language. From that time until now hundreds of programming languages were invented, different programming paradigms were defined, all with the main goal to make computer programming easier and closer to as many people as possible. Many battles were fought among scientists as well as among developers around concepts of programming, programming languages and paradigms. It can be said that programming paradigms and programming languages were very often a trigger for many changes and improvements in computer science as well as in computer industry. Definitely, computer programming is one of the cornerstones of computer science. Today there are many tools that give a help in the process of programming, but there is still a programming tasks that can be solved only manually. Therefore, programming is still one of the most creative parts of interaction with computers. Programmers should chose programming language in accordance to task they have to solve, but very often, they chose it in accordance to their personal preferences, their beliefs and many other subjective reasons. Nevertheless, the market of programming languages can be merciless to languages as history was merciless to some people, even whole nations. Programming languages and developers get born, live and die leaving more or less tracks and successors, and not always the best survives. The history of programming languages is closely connected to the history of computers and computer science itself. Every single thing from one of them has its reflexions onto the other. This paper gives a short overview of last fifty years of computer programming and computer programming languages, but also gives many ideas that influenced other aspects of computer science. Particularly, programming paradigms are described, their intentions and goals, as well as the most of the significant languages of all paradigms

ICASE Computer Science Program

The Institute for Computer Applications in Science and Engineering computer science program is discussed in outline form. Information is given on such topics as problem decomposition, algorithm development, programming languages, and parallel architectures

Algorithmique et Programmation. Introduction

This is the introduction to Section I/9, Algorithms and Programming, of the Encyclopaedia of Computer Science and Information Systems. This section is devoted to three fundamental tools in computer science: algorithms, machine models and programming languages

Forty hours of declarative programming: Teaching Prolog at the Junior College Utrecht

This paper documents our experience using declarative languages to give secondary school students a first taste of Computer Science. The course aims to teach students a bit about programming in Prolog, but also exposes them to important Computer Science concepts, such as unification or searching strategies. Using Haskell's Snap Framework in combination with our own NanoProlog library, we have developed a web application to teach this course.Comment: In Proceedings TFPIE 2012, arXiv:1301.465

Teaching UbiComp with Sense

Modern computer science education has to take account of the recent changes towards smart ubiquitous computing devices. In addition, existing programming languages are needlessly difficult for novice programmers to learn concepts. We have developed Sense, an extension to the graphical programming language Scratch, and an associated sensor/actuator board. Together, these will allow novice undergraduate students to quickly develop their own smart devices while learning the fundamentals of programming. Students will first study with Sense in 2011 but developmental feedback has been positive

Teaching UbiComp with Sense

Modern computer science education has to take account of the recent changes towards smart ubiquitous computing devices. In addition, existing programming languages are needlessly difficult for novice programmers to learn concepts. We have developed Sense, an extension to the graphical programming language Scratch, and an associated sensor/actuator board. Together, these will allow novice undergraduate students to quickly develop their own smart devices while learning the fundamentals of programming. Students will first study with Sense in 2011 but developmental feedback has been positive

Visual and Textual Programming Languages: A Systematic Review of the Literature

It is well documented, and has been the topic of much research, that Computer Science courses tend to have higher than average drop out rates at third level. This is a problem that needs to be addressed with urgency but also caution. The required number of Computer Science graduates is growing every year but the number of graduates is not meeting this demand and one way that this problem can be alleviated is to encourage students at an early age towards studying Computer Science courses. This paper presents a systematic literature review on the role of visual and textual programming languages when learning to program, particularly as a first programming language. The approach is systematic, in that a structured search of electronic resources has been conducted, and the results are presented and quantitatively analysed. This study will give insight into whether or not the current approaches to teaching young learners programming are viable, and examines what we can do to increase the interest and retention of these students as they progress through their education.Comment: 18 pages (including 2 bibliography pages), 3 figure

Comparative Analysis of Widely use Object-Oriented Languages

Programming is an integral part of computer science discipline. Every day the programming environment is not only rapidly growing but also changing and languages are constantly evolving. Learning of object-oriented paradigm is compulsory in every computer science major so the choice of language to teach object-oriented principles is very important. Due to large pool of object-oriented languages, it is difficult to choose which should be the first programming language in order to teach object-oriented principles. Many studies shown which should be the first language to tech object-oriented concepts but there is no method to compare and evaluate these languages. In this article we proposed a comprehensive framework to evaluate the widely used object-oriented languages. The languages are evaluated basis of their technical and environmental features.Comment: 30 pages, figures