Stanford CS department updates introductory courses: Java is Gone

April 21, 2017 at 7:09 am

See update here: Stanford is NOT switching from Java to JavaScript: I was mistaken

Stanford has decided to move away from Java in their intro courses. Surprisingly, they have decided to move to JavaScript. Philip Guo showed that most top CS departments are moving to Python. The Stanford Daily article linked below doesn’t address any other languages considered.

The SIGCSE-Members list recently polled all of their members to talk about what they’re currently teaching. The final spreadsheet of results is here. Python appears 60 times, C++ 54 times, Java 84 times, and JavaScript 28 times. I was surprised to see how common C++ is, and if Java is dying (or “showing its age,” as Eric Roberts is quoted below), it’s going out as the reigning champ.

When Java came out in 1995, the computer science faculty was excited to transition to the new language. Roberts wrote the textbooks, worked with other faculty members to restructure the course and assignments and introduced Java at Stanford in 2002. “Java had stabilized,” Roberts said. “It was clear that many universities were going in that direction. It’s 2017 now, and Java is showing its age.” According to Roberts, Java was intended early on as “the language of the Internet”. But now, more than a decade after the transition to Java, Javascript has taken its place as a web language.

Source: CS department updates introductory courses | Stanford Daily

ADDENDUM: As you see from Nick Parlante’s comment below, the JavaScript version is only an experiment. From people I’ve talked to at Stanford, and from how I read the article quoted above (“more than a decade after the transition to Java, Javascript has taken its place”), I believe that Stanford is ending Java in CS106. I’m leaving the title as-is for now. I’ve offered to Marty Stepp that if CS106 is still predominantly Java in one year, I will post a new blog post admitting that I was wrong. Someone remind me in April 2018, please.

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Entry filed under: Uncategorized. Tags: computing education, Java, programming languages, Python.