[geeks] Introductory programming language?

[John Francini]

On 1 Sep 2011, at 23:58, Bob wrote:

> On 09/01/11, Lionel Peterson<lionel4287 at gmail.com> wrote:BASIC was
> taught as a novelty, there was almost no expectation that BASIC
> students would ever learn a second language or program professionally...
>
> Serious students learned other languages, which varied, based on what
> decade
> you were in college...
>
> Lionel
>
> When I did take COBOL in that local college, I had to take BASIC first.
> It was not a novelty, it was a prerequisite.

Same for me; late 70s/early 80s at Bentley College (now Bentley University, a
business-oriented school), the curriculum was: BASIC, FORTRAN, COBOL, Codasyl
DBMS, Systems Analysis, several electives, and the Advanced Computer Topics
Seminar.

The electives included RPG II (taught on an IBM System/34) and Assembly
Language Programming (taught on the school's DECsystem-10).

It's changed markedly since then.

john