Generally I agree with 'R'. Really the point of early CS courses should be to give a theoretical understanding of how programming works, the students shouldn't have to be worrying about incidental things like compiling and nit-picky languages (although these are a fact of life). > 1. Recursion is fundamental to the theoretical underpinnings of > computer science. You just can't follow most of CS theory without > grasping Recursion. > > Recursion is hard. > > Looping is easy. > > Teach students recursion. They won't have any trouble figuring > out how to use while() later on. But trying to teach theory or > algorithms (particularly the analysis of algorithms) to someone > who never grokked recursion is unbelievably painful (I've done > it!). > > I remember being forbidden to use any looping constructs in my > first semester of computer science. It was a very helpful > discipline. > Then tell them that they are never ever actually allowed to use recursion unless they can prove that the problem can be solved no other way. (just contributing to the flame-war.) leif _______________________________________________ TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota Help beta test TCLUG's potential new home: http://plone.mn-linux.org Got pictures for TCLUG? Beta test http://plone.mn-linux.org/gallery tclug-list at mn-linux.org https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list