Greatest Software Ever Written 4250

"Good" academic programs?

The ACM's curriculum guidelines * do recommend teaching more than one language:

We believe that undergraduate computer science programs must teach students how to use at least one programming language well; furthermore, we recommend that computer science programs should teach students to become competent in languages that make use of at least two programming paradigms.

I have no idea how widely this recommendation is followed. I made a cursory attempt to find out whether it's followed at four schools that seem to have well-regarded CS programs 1 -- MIT, CMU, Stanford, and UC Berkeley. Here's what I found in a quick search of requirements for an undergraduate degree:

(*) MIT teaches its first course using Abelson & Sussman's "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs" (SICP), which presumably means that programming buttignments are done in Scheme. I couldn't quite tell what other languages students might have to learn along the way, but it seems unlikely that they wouldn't have to learn at least one more.

(*) CMU teaches its first course using Java, and also requires courses in which students would be exposed to C and ML (a functional language).

(*) Stanford appears to use C++ in its first course, and to require a course in which students would use Lisp.

(*) UC Berkeley also uses SICP-Scheme in its first course, and other required courses use Java and (I think) C.

1 It's possible -- maybe likely -- that these schools' reputation is based more on research output than on quality of undergraduate education. Still, I thought it would be an interesting sample.

I suspect all of these schools also at some point expose the students to buttembly language; I came across a couple of mentions of that but wasn't really looking hard enough to be sure one way or another.

At the school where I teach, students who take all the required courses 2 will be exposed to C, Java, C++, a functional language (usually Scheme or J), and an buttembler language (usually MIPS). We revamped our introductory programming sequence (three courses) not too long ago, and one result of the revamping was to increase the number of languages students are exposed to. It had been been taught all in C++; after much (contentious) discussion, we settled on C for CS1, Java for CS2, and Java-C++ for CS3 -- and part of the rationale for doing this was that it would be a good thing to expose students to several different languages.

2 As opposed to getting credit for some of them via AP exams.

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-- B. L. Mbuttingill ObDisclaimer: I don't speak for my employers; they return the favor.