[Discuss] Functional programming @ UVic (was 'C' string tokenizer for those who hate strtok)

[stephen hawkes]

Adam Parkin wrote:
> stephen hawkes wrote:
>> I've heard the same argument, which imho is a weak one. 110/115 are 
>> being revamped right now, still no plans for introducing functional 
>> programming. 212 will be revamped soon too, it desperately needs more 
>
> Hmm, that's interesting that 212 is being revamped, I actually applied 
> to teach that one in the fall. =8->  I agree though that for CSC 
> students the course really isn't useful because it really has no 
> focus, but rather a "lets touch on everything just a little bit" feel 
> to it.
Well it won't be changed for a while (from what I've heard, I didn't 
actually go to any of the meetings myself, but another cscu exec member 
did). When I took it I really didn't learn much in my opinion, but it 
was an interesting overview.. too easy when I took it though.
>
>> focus. I am not against java for first year, but teaching programming 
>> in general along with trying to teach object oriented ideas seems a 
>> little awkward to me. Students get confused, they don't actually 
>> understand the OO part and they start "flailing" (as one friend put 
>> it). I personally 
>
> I think one of the real problems is that in using Java so many 
> students are encouraged not to question what something does ("what 
> does that public static void part in front of main do?", etc), but to 
> just do it because "it works" which is a horrible habit to get into 
> *ESPECIALLY* when you're just learning.  I'm not so sure that teaching 
> OO along with programming proper isn't a bad idea, but I do agree that 
> the way things are done now there's a tendancy for students to confuse 
> OO concepts (inheritance, etc) with general programming concepts 
> (modularity, writing functions, etc).
That's what I meant by flailing, just doing stuff because it makes it 
compile and not knowing why you are doing it. While I do think teaching 
OO is good, I also think it is so much for some people to wrap their 
brains around at one time that it leads to the "flailing". I think some 
teachers also teach "rules" that are wrong, like elementary school 
teachers with the "you can't start a sentence with because". I can't 
really remember any solid examples, best I can think of is "don't use 
global variables". Globals should be used judiciously, but it's not like 
you shouldn't use them at all.
>
>> think teaching a procedural language in 110 makes more sense. Teach 
>> modularity, scope etc, clean programming in general, then introduce 
>> OO in 115 carrying on with the clean readable programming extended to OO 
>
> Depending on who you get, that is the way it works.  110 is general 
> intro to programming (just happens to use Java), and in 115 they go 
> headlong into inheritance, abstract classes, etc.  The problem is that 
> Java forces you to think so much in terms of objects and classes that 
> you can't completely divorce the OO stuff from the 
> procedural/imperative stuff.
So why not pascal or something for a first language? C is no good 
because of the memory management stuff (bit to much for that course 
imho), but if you were to argue that it isn't too much then C++ would be 
a good candidate, as you could start with procedural/imperative then 
using the same language move to OO. Don't most other universities use c++?

As much as I love perl, I really think it would make a horrible first 
language (imagine the mess students would make with that). How about 
python though? I think I remember Corless stating that he thought it was 
a good language for teaching.
>
>> and how OO can help with that. And as long as you are going to teach 
>> OO, why not force students to write some smalltalk? It's fully OO, 
>> squeak is easy to install, it's historically interesting and it is 
>> still relevant (lots of implementations, and you can even write it 
>> for palmOS which I 
>
> Absolutely, but there is one big downside to squeak (at least the way 
> I understand it) -- it's difficult to transfer something you've 
> written on one machine to another.
I never thought of that. But in all honesty I have written no smalltalk. 
It's interpretted though, so you just need the text files.
>
>> found interesting). Ok, you could argue against the still relevant as 
>> I'm sure very few people use it, but it is usable and some people are 
>> using it.
>
> Who cares if people are using it or not, so long as it teaches 
> students the skills they need to learn to write code in any language. 
> =8-> That's why I have such a problem with Java as a 1st language, 
> because I think most of the reason institutions choose it is because 
> it's widely used and not because it's a language that lends itself to 
> teaching programming concepts.
I do agree it's not great to choose a language to teach with by what is 
used in industry, but it does make what you are learning more applicable.
>
>> I also think that recursion has to be introduced early, it's a 
>> difficult concept for most to grasp at first and introducing it early 
>> helps. Recursion is a lot easier to read in a functional language (in 
>> my experience) but it can be taught in any language (that supports 
>> it). In 
>
> Well, in functional programming proper generally there is no 
> iteration, so you are *forced* to use recursion to solve most 
> problems.  But yeah, I agree, recursion should be introduced sooner.
>
> I've never really understood why recursion is such a big deal, I found 
> things like pointers and references much harder to understand than 
> recursion.
I do agree, but in my experience more people have problems with it. I 
found writing ASM helped immensely on understanding pointers.
>
>> 230 Jason Corless made us solve and assignment question recursively 
>> in 6811 ASM, which was pretty cool since you can see what the stack 
>> is doing (at that point we were using simulators not the board).
>
> Totally, I had him for that course as well, and remember Wookie quite 
> fondly. =8->  Our first assignment we had to write factorial as a 
> recursive function in 6811 ASM and yeah, it was a great learning 
> experience.
Sounds familiar, maybe we were in the same course. I was in the second 
230 class he taught (the first one gained him the nickname inflexible 
bastard from some student that was doing poorly).
>
>> In my experience as well I only was "forced" to use a functional 
>> language in 330(programming languages) and for me it was scheme. 
>> Depending on who you take the AI course with (if you take it) you may 
>> use a functional language. I can't think of any other courses that use 
>
> I had to use ML & Scheme in 330, and Scheme in 212, but yeah that was 
> it for the "forced to use".  The only other time I was even encouraged 
> to use a functional language was the AI course with George (and that's 
> just because he's a big functional programming guy).  Some people 
> (like Taras mentioned previously) write their 340 assignments in ML, 
> but when I did that course I was forced to use Matlab for everything.
340 I was allowed to use anything (had to be matlab for the first 
assignment though). I chose octave, as I had experience with matlab 
already and it was super quick to write the solutions in (line for line 
with the pseudo code). I saw some java one friend wrote.. it was a lot 
longer. I don't think anyone used a functional language.
>
>> functional languages. I agree that it is wrong that there isn't more 
>> of a focus on functional languages, yet at the same time I have no 
>> solution. Where could they be included? Should there be a course 
>> "Intro to functional programming"?
>
> Actually, George once mentioned to me the idea of having an "advanced 
> functional programming" course which IMHO could very easily turn into 
> the best course offered at UVic.  The only problem is that there is so 
> little exposure to functional programming in the first 3 years of a 
> CSC degree that most students wouldn't be able to meet the pre-reqs. =;->
Yeah I would like to take a course like that, but I'd probably be over 
my head. Isn't there a growing population of students in CSc, could an 
intro fucntional programming course be taught? Either a 2nd or 3rd year 
course (there aren't really many second year courses).
>
>> Anyhow I think I've ranted enough.
>
> Oh come on, this is the VLUG forum, there's no such thing as ranting 
> enough (or too much for that matter). =;->
Haha, fair enough. I usually use that line for when my gf is asking when 
I will be off the computer (she's the one that thinks i've ranted enough).
>
> -- 
> Adam Parkin
> E-mail: pzelnip at telus.net
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