Home In Praise of Scripting: Real Programming Pragmatism Ronald Loui, In Praise of Scripting: Real Programming Pragmatism, IEEE Computer, vol. 41, no. 7, July 2008. [Openly accessible draft here] The July IEEE Computer carries an article arguing for the use of scripting languages as first programming languages, and also arguing for a greater study of what the author calls "language pragmatics" (the original article is behind the IEEE paywall, but you can find a draft that has roughly the same content here). The argument for using scripting languages as educational languages can be summed up by Loui's abstract:

The author recommends that scripting, not Java, be taught first, asserting that students should learn to love their own possibilities before they learn to loathe other people's restrictions. The bulk of the article is devoted to exploring this basic theme in more depth, and provides an interesting contrast to the arguments in favor of moving away from Java (and scripting languages) advanced in

The bulk of the article is devoted to exploring this basic theme in more depth, and provides an interesting contrast to the arguments in favor of moving away from Java (and scripting languages) advanced in Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow? (discussed earlier on LtU here ). Loui spends the latter part of the article arguing that, in addition to syntax and semantics, research on programming language should include a formal study of language pragmatics. According to Loui, a formal study of pragmatics would address questions such as: What is the average lifetime of a program written in language X for programmers of type Y, for a program of type Z?

What is the average time spent authoring versus debugging a program in language X for programmers of type Y, for a program of type Z?

What is the consumption of short-term memory when programming in language X for programmers of type Y, for a program of type Z? Comment viewing options Flat list - collapsed Flat list - expanded Threaded list - collapsed Threaded list - expanded Date - newest first Date - oldest first Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.