Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2003
Publisher
Doctoral School of Informatics and Doctoral School of Mathematical and Computational Sciences/University of Debrecen
Abstract
The College Board Advanced Placement exam in computer science will use the language Java starting in fall 2003. The language chosen for this exam is based on the language commonly taught in introductory computer science courses at the university level. This article reviews the purpose of an introductory course and the various suggestions for the curriculum of introductory courses published by the Association for Computing Machinery. It then proposes that such a course stress foundational concepts over specific language syntax, and then provides a list of such foundational concepts and related topics. Based on this fundamental curriculum, the article recommends C++ as the most appropriate language. An appendix provides a sample syllabus.
Recommended Citation
Smolarski, D. C. (2003). A first course in computer science: Languages and goals. Teaching Mathematics and Computer Science, 1(1), 137–152. https://tmcs.math.unideb.hu/load_doc.php?p=2&t=doc
Comments
Teaching Mathematics and Computer Science (Teach. Math. Comput. Sci.) is a peer-reviewed open access journal.