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# The History of Computer Language Selection

Kevin R. Parker, Bill Davey

► To cite this version:

Kevin R. Parker, Bill Davey. The History of Computer Language Selection. Arthur Tatnall. Reflections on the History of Computing: Preserving Memories and Sharing Stories, AICT-387, Springer, pp.166-179, 2012, IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology (SURVEY), 10.1007/978-3-642-33899-1_12. hal-01526795

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# The History of Computer Language Selection

**Kevin R. Parker**

College of Business, Idaho State University, Pocatello, Idaho USA

[parkerkr@isu.edu](mailto:parkerkr@isu.edu)

**Bill Davey**

School of Business Information Technology, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia

[billd@rmit.edu.au](mailto:billd@rmit.edu.au)

**Abstract:** This examines the history of computer language choice for both industry use and university programming courses. The study considers events in two developed countries and reveals themes that may be common in the language selection history of other developed nations. History shows a set of recurring problems for those involved in choosing languages. This study shows that those involved in the selection process can be informed by history when making those decisions.

**Keywords:** selection of programming languages, pragmatic approach to selection, pedagogical approach to selection.

## 1. Introduction

The history of computing is often expressed in terms of significant hardware developments. Both the United States and Australia made early contributions in computing. Many trace the dawn of the history of programmable computers to Eckert and Mauchly's departure from the ENIAC project to start the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation. In Australia, the history of programmable computers starts with CSIRAC, the fourth programmable computer in the world that ran its first test program in 1949. This computer, manufactured by the government science organization (CSIRO), was used into the 1960s as a working machine at the University of Melbourne and still exists as a complete unit at the Museum of Victoria in Melbourne. Australia's early entry into computing makes a comparison with the United States interesting.

These early computers needed programmers, that is, people with the expertise to convert a problem into a mathematical representation directly executable by the computer. The earliest history of programming languages was not of selection but of invention. Groups would construct a computer with a means of programming in mind. To simplify the programming process, various methods of helping humans cope with the demands of digital devices created the need for shortcuts and these became the first programming languages. The first programmers were mostly mathematicians or engineers who programmed in machine code of some form. Many of them used
hardwiring to achieve their ends. These early programmers had no formal education in machine language programming.

The Computer History Museum (http://www.computerhistory.org/) provides a timeline for the creation of early languages, which is shown in Table 1.

<table><caption>Table1: Timeline for Creation of Early Languages (http://www.computerhistory.org/)</caption><thead><tr><td>Year</td><td>Development</td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>1945</td><td>Kruse works on Plankalkul</td></tr><tr><td>1948</td><td>Claude Shannon identifies the bit as the fundamental unit of data and shows how to code data for transmission</td></tr><tr><td>1952</td><td>Grace Hopper complete the A-0 compiler</td></tr><tr><td>1953</td><td>John Backus creates 'speedcoding' for the IBM 701</td></tr><tr><td>1956</td><td>Bob Patrick of GM and Owen Mock of North American Aviation create the batch processing system GM-NAA for the IBM 704</td></tr><tr><td>1957</td><td>FORTRAN runs for the first time (Backus at IBM)</td></tr><tr><td>1960</td><td>COBOL created by a team representing manufacturers under Howard Bromberg</td></tr><tr><td>1960</td><td>LISP created by John McCarthy</td></tr><tr><td>1962</td><td>Kenneth Iverson develops APL</td></tr><tr><td>1963</td><td>ASCII determined</td></tr><tr><td>1964</td><td>BASIC created at Dartmouth by Thomas Kurtz and John Kemeny</td></tr><tr><td>1965</td><td>Simula written by Kristen Nygaard and Ole-John Dahl</td></tr><tr><td>1969</td><td>UNIX developed at AT&T by Kenneth Thompson and Dennis Ritchie</td></tr></tbody></table>

Eventually computer languages became codified and distributed. This led to the need to provide a trained workforce, and formal institutions such as universities became providers of this training. For example, the University of Sydney introduced a course called 'The Theory of Computation, Computing Practices and Theory of Programming' in 1947 (Tatnall and Davey, 2004).

The speed of the introduction of specialized degrees paralleled the introduction of hardware and software in industry. At that time the computing industry and academia were intertwined. Industry progressed due to innovations made by university academics, and many industry leaders moved to teaching and research positions. In Australia the 1960s saw Gerry Maynard move from the Post Office to set up a course at the Caulfield Technical College, Donald Overheu move from the Weapons Research Establishment to the University of Queensland, and Westy Williams leave the public service to start a program at Bendigo Technical College (Tatnall and Davey, 2004). Computing founders in the USA were also intimately connected with Universities. Grace Hopper, originally a teacher of mathematics at Vassar, became a research fellow at Harvard while she worked on the Mark I and Mark II for the navy (Sammet, 1981). Alternatively, Backus produced FORTRAN as an IBM employee and the language became rooted in industry before being introduced in academia (Perlis, 1981). The later development of ALGOL was the result of a conglomeration of actors from industry and academia representing many stakeholders in play today, including D. Arden (MIT), J. Backus (IBM), P. Desilets (Remington-Rand Univac), D. Evans (Bendix), R. Goodman (Westinghouse), S. Gorn (University of Pennsylvania), H. Huskey (University of California), C. Katz (Remington-Rand Univac), J. McCarthy (MIT), A. Orden (University of Chicago), A. Perlis (Carnegie
Tech), R. Rich (Johns Hopkins), S. Rosen (Philco), W. Turanski (Remington-Rand
Univac), and J. Wegstein (National Bureau of Standards) (Perlis, 1981).

These examples indicate that the history of computer language selection should be
viewed in light of both the nature of languages and the stakeholders that determine the
lifetime of each language. In fact, it can be argued that a language becomes mature
when it is recognised by a University for teaching.

## 2. History of Language Development

The plethora of new languages in the period from 1960 to 1971 makes the task of
identifying trends difficult. As early as 1960 there were 73 languages in existence
(Sammet, 1972). By 1967 there were 117, and by 1971 there were 164 (Sammet,
1972). One response to the difficulty of determining language significance was taken
by the ACM Special Interest Group on Programming Languages (SIGPLAN). The
program committee for the History of Programming Languages (HOPL) conference
in Los Angeles assessed language importance via the following criteria: (1) the
language has been in use for at least 10 years, (2) the language has significant
influence, and (3) the language is still in use (Bergin and Gibson, 1996)

The development of FORTRAN began in 1954 and culminated in the first release
in 1957. Smillie (2004) recalls FORTRAN's amazing appearance in light of how it
changed programming from almost electronics into a human activity:

> I remember a lecture given by a colleague, Peter Sefton, in the late
> 1950s on a new language called FORTRAN, which he said he thought
> might relieve some of the tedium of programming in machine language.

ALGOL, released in 1958 and updated in 1960, introduced recursion, indirect
addressing, and character manipulation, among other features. Many universities
adopted ALGOL as the language for use in their computer programming courses
because it was a precise and useful way for capturing algorithms (Keet, 2004).
COBOL was developed in 1959 and was widely used for a number of decades in
business applications. By 1972, most universities in Australia and the USA had
established computer science or information systems (the latter often called ‘data
processing’) degree programs. Almost all computer science degree programs offered
ALGOL, FORTRAN, or LISP, while most data processing programs offered
COBOL. In Britain, BASIC was also important. During the late 60s, departments
experimented with various languages like PL/I.

The mid-1970s brought about another important change – the introduction of the
microcomputer. These machines came with BASIC and revolutionised the teaching of
computer courses in high schools. Most secondary schools immediately started using
BASIC, but this trend did not impact university programs.

With the introduction of Pascal in the 1970s, most universities adopted Pascal for
their introductory programming course. Some authors attribute this to two pragmatic
factors: the invention of the personal computer, and the availability of Pascal
compilers (Levy, 1995). Pascal compilers were always far slower than the languages
used in industry, but the speed was well within the limits needed in a teaching
environment. At this time academics used arguments to justify the divergence from using industrially common languages. For example, Merritt (1980) wrote:

> Since Pascal is a widely available and well-designed language, it was suggested that Pascal provided a unique language environment in which these features that support high quality program construction can be learned. However, it is reasonable to expect that reliable software will be a priority, that the connections between good programs and language features will continue to be made, and that language features will develop along the lines presented here. Information Systems graduates will be in systems development and management roles.

The use of Pascal in academia was eventually superseded by languages used in industry, beginning with C and C++, and eventually shifting to Java and C#. As recently as 1996 a survey of CSAB accredited programs showed the most popular first language was still Pascal at 36% of the responding institutions, followed by C++ at 32% and C at 17% (McCaulley and Manaris, 1998).

# 3. Trends in Language Selection

The debate over programming language selection has been ongoing since the introduction of programming classes in university curricula. A sampling of papers published over time provides some insights into the trends observed during given time periods.

## 3.1 The 1970s

Dijkstra (1972, p. 864) stated that:

> ...the tools we are trying to use and the language or notation we are using to express or record our thoughts are the major factors determining what we can think or express at all! The analysis of the influence that programming languages have on the thinking habits of their users ... give[s] us a new collection of yardsticks for comparing the relative merits of various programming languages.

Sime (1973) noted a need for an empirical approach to evaluate programming languages for unskilled users rather than experienced users, a trend that he observed in language evaluation papers prior to his work. Yohe (1974) pointed out that the development of problem-oriented languages began in the late 1950s, and they now offered an alternative to assembly language, although that was still the most basic tool available to most programmers. The availability of so many languages, however, presented a new problem in the selection of a language best suited for a particular task. Friedman and Koffman (1976) stressed the need for structured programming as a replacement to the older versions of FORTRAN, noting that "teaching disciplined programming at an elementary level is a nearly impossible task in the absence of a suitable implementation language" (p. 1). Smith and Rickman (1976) were also
seeking a replacement for FORTRAN, developing a well-designed set of criteria,
including pedagogical factors, resource constraints, and political issues through which
they ‘graded’ ALGOL W, APL, Assembler, Basic, COBOL, EULER, Structured
FORTRAN, LISP, Pascal, PL/I, and SNOBOL. Furugori and Jalics (1977) reported
that the results of their survey indicated that over half of the respondents still used
FORTRAN in their introductory courses, while PL/I was used in a quarter of the
schools. Finally, in 1978, Schneider indicated a trend toward the use of Pascal in
classes. He pointed out that Pascal was the language that best met two critical and
apparently opposing criteria – richness and simplicity. Pascal was rich in those
constructs needed for introducing fundamental concepts in computer programming,
but simple enough to be presented and grasped in a one-semester course.

3.2 The 1980s

The 1980s were marked by an increase in the number of available languages, which
led to increased uncertainty about which to choose for the introductory programming
course. Various paradigms were also introduced during this period. Boom and Jong
(1980) performed a critical comparison of multiple programming language
implementations available on the CDC Cyber 73, including ALGOL 60, FORTRAN,
Pascal, and ALGOL 68. Tharp (1982) also pointed out the variety of languages
available, including FORTRAN, COBOL, Jovial, Ada, ALGOL, Pascal, PL/I, and
Spitbol. He discussed several recent comparisons of programming languages on the
basis of their support of good software engineering practices, availability of control
structures, the programmer time required for developing a representative non-numeric
algorithm, and the machine resources expended in compiling and executing it.
Soloway, Bonar, and Erlich (1983) discussed recent research into finding a better
match between a language and an individual’s natural skills and abilities. Their study
explored the relationship between the preferred cognitive strategies of individuals and
programming language constructs. Luker (1989) discussed the alternatives to Pascal,
noting that many instructors at that time were choosing between Ada and MODULA-
2. He then examined the paradigms available, including functional programming,
procedural programming, object-oriented programming, and concurrent
programming.

3.3 The 1990s

King (1992) looked at the evolution of the programming course from the Computing
Curricula 1978 to the Computing Curricula 1991 recommendations. He noted that the
1980s saw the creation of several important languages while at the same time several
languages of the 1970s became popular. He also discussed the increasing popularity
of various programming paradigms during the 1980s, including the imperative or
procedural paradigm, the concurrent or distributed paradigm, the database paradigm,
the functional or applicative paradigm, the logic-programming paradigm, and the
object-oriented paradigm. He continued by proposing a set of criteria for the selection
of programming languages. Howatt (1995) also proposed an evaluation method for
programming languages. His criteria included the broad categories of language design and implementation, human factors, software engineering, and application domain. He went on to provide an evaluation approach. Howland (1997) also presented an extensive list of criteria that the author felt were important in choosing a language for introductory computer science instruction, but concluded that the selection of a programming language should be made primarily on the basis of how well key programming concepts may be expressed in the language.

## 3.4 The 2000s

By the turn of the century, the object-oriented paradigm was becoming more prominent, as was the importance of security. The Ad Hoc AP CS Committee (2000) noted that in their study of language selection for CSI and CS2 classes three main principles emerged: emphasis on object-orientation, need for safety in the language and environment, and a desire for simplicity. Wile (2002) stated that programming language choice is subject to many pressures, both technical and social. He organized the pressures into three competing needs: (1) those of the problem domain for which languages are used for problem solving; (2) the conceptual and computing models that underlie the designs of the languages themselves, independent of their particular problem domains; and (3) the social and physical context of use of the languages. He also observed a trend away from writing an entire application 'from scratch' in a single language to build a stand-alone system toward using general-purpose languages as the integrating medium for extensive functionality offered by database packages, web-based services, GUIs, and myriad other COTS and customized products that interface via an application program interface (API). At the same time, 'contextual concerns' for security, privacy, robustness, safety, etc., universally dominate applications across the board (p. 1027). Roberts (2004a) observed another trend, that the growth in the popularity of the object-oriented paradigm and the decision by the College Board to move the Advanced Placement Computer Science program to Java led an increasing number of universities to adopt Java as the programming language for their introductory course. He further pointed out (2004b) that there were two additional challenges in which dramatic increases had a negative impact on pedagogy: (1) the number of programming details that students must master has grown, and (2) the languages, libraries, and tools on which introductory courses depend are changing more rapidly than they have in the past. Finally, Gee, Wills, and Cooke (2005) pointed out another trend that is becoming increasingly evident (and controversial), that is, the use of scripting languages to teach programming concepts because they provide "not only a proper programming environment but also an instant link into the formation of active web pages". Parker et al. (2006a, 2006b) examined a multitude of studies, including many of those mentioned above, and presented a set of criteria for use when selecting a computer programming language for an introductory programming course, and developed an instrument that allows weighting of each of those selection criteria to specify their relative importance in the selection process.
## 4. Language Selection Studies

The problems that must be faced in designing an introductory course are many and varied. These range from those of interdepartmental politics in the case of service courses to logistical challenges if substantial numbers of students must be accommodated (Solntseff, 1978). A cursory glance through back issues of computer-related journals such as the *ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE) Bulletin* makes it apparent that discussions about the introductory programming language course and the language appropriate for that course have been numerous and on-going (Smolarski, 2003). The selection of a programming language for instructional purposes is often a tedious chore because there is no well-established approach for performing the evaluation. The informal process may involve faculty discussion, with champions touting the advantages of their preferred language, and an eventual consensus, or at least surrender. As the number of faculty, students, and language options grows, this process becomes increasingly unwieldy. As it stands, the process currently lacks structure and replicability (Parker et al., 2006a).

A list of the factors that affected the choice of a programming language for an introductory course at one US university is ably discussed in Smith and Rickman (1976). According to Solntseff (1978), there "*appears to be no other discussion in the literature of comparable thoroughness*". A current study carefully examines a first programming language for IT students (Gee et al., 2005). A more recent study examines over 60 papers relevant to language selection in academia (Parker et al., 2006a). The selection of programming languages in university curricula in the US and Australia is almost identical, with some interesting differences. The current distribution in Australia is shown in Table 2.

<table><caption>Table 2: Languages taught (de Raadt et al. 2003b)</caption><thead><tr><td>Language</td><td>Number of courses</td><td>Weighted by students</td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Java</td><td>23</td><td>43.9%</td></tr><tr><td>VB</td><td>14</td><td>18.96%</td></tr><tr><td>C++</td><td>8</td><td>15.2%</td></tr><tr><td>Haskell</td><td>3</td><td>8.8%</td></tr><tr><td>C</td><td>4</td><td>5.5%</td></tr><tr><td>Eiffel</td><td>2</td><td>3.3%</td></tr><tr><td>Delphi</td><td>1</td><td>2.0%</td></tr><tr><td>Ada</td><td>1</td><td>1.7%</td></tr><tr><td>jBase</td><td>1</td><td>0.8%</td></tr></tbody></table>

This is a close approximation to the statistics in US universities. One historical difference between the countries involved Ada. When the US Department of Defense mandated Ada for their applications the language experienced a surge in US colleges, but its use declined after 1997 when the mandate was removed.
# 5. Selection Approaches

Over the years languages have been invented to solve problems. Other languages have been invented to make teaching algorithms easier. This has led to two sometimes conflicting lines of arguments by academics about which languages they should use in university courses: choose a language that is commonly used or is expected to be commonly used in industry, or choose a language that best supports concept development in students. Thus, there have been two distinct arguments for language selection that have been extant throughout the history of languages: pragmatic versus pedagogical.

## 5.1 Pragmatic selection

The pragmatic approach recommends choosing a language that will help students get a job after graduating. The pragmatic approach is impacted by a language's industry acceptance as well as the marketability of individuals proficient in its use.

### 5.1.1 Industry acceptance

Industry acceptance refers to the market penetration (Riehle, 2003) of a particular language in industry, i.e., the use of a language in business and industry. Often referred to as industrial relevance, this can be assessed based on current and projected usage, as well as the number of current and projected positions. Stephenson (2000) claims that this factor has the greatest influence in language selection, as indicated by 23.5% of schools that participated in his study. Lee and Stroud (1996) point out that real-world acceptability is a factor that once had little weight, as indicated by the earlier use of ALGOL and Pascal, but that attitude does seem to be changing. They note that for their students being able to have an industrially accepted language on their résumé is a significant consideration for them. A 2001 census of all Australian universities revealed that perceived industry demand was the major factor in the choice of an introductory language (de Raadt et al., 2003a). King (1992) agrees that many language decisions are made on the basis of current popularity or the likelihood of future popularity; he notes that choosing popular languages has a number of practical benefits, including increased student motivation to study a language that they have heard of and know is in demand, as well as a good selection of books and language implementations that will be available for a popular language.

### 5.1.2 Marketability

Marketability refers to the employability of graduates. This may include regional or national/international marketability, based on the placement of a program's graduates. Language selection is often driven by demand in the workplace, i.e., what employers want. Not only are marketable skills important in future employability, but students are more enthusiastic when studying a language they feel will increase their employability (de Raadt et al., 2003a). Language marketability is stressed in several studies. The census of introductory programming courses conducted by de Raadt et al. (2003a) emphasizes the importance of employability. In fact, the most commonly
listed factor in language selection (by 56% of the participants) was the desire to teach a language that provides graduates with marketable skills. Watt (2000) discusses the need for transferable skills that will be useful in whatever career the student chooses to pursue. Emigh (2001) agrees that the primary concern in language evaluation must be the demand in the workplace and argues that when deciding on a new language one must take into account employers' expectations of graduates. Further, graduates' marketability can be improved by exposing them to several languages (de Raadt et al., 2003a). They cite, for example, that a progression from C to C++ to Java will qualify a graduate for more advertised positions than exposure to any single language in isolation. Extrinsically motivated students aspiring to a lucrative career will demand to be taught those tools that are currently in vogue in the industry. Universities may have to accept that pedagogical issues in the choice of platform and language must be secondary to marketing concerns (Jenkins, 2001).

## 5.2 Pedagogical selection

Smolarski (2003), McIver and Conway (1996), and Howland (1997) question whether changes in the curriculum and programming courses should be as driven by industry as they often seem to be. They argue that decisions about the language used in an introductory course should be made based on how well it underscores fundamental skills that prepare the student for subsequent courses and helps to make any student-developed software well-written and error-free, rather than on what language would be most useful for a student in finding a job (Smolarski, 2003).

### 5.2.1 Avoiding the complexities of industrial environments

These arguments also call attention to the possibility that the purposes of teaching problem solving and introducing a professional grade language into the first course conflict because students end up focusing on difficulties associated with that language and its environment (Johnson, 1995; Jenkins, 2002; Gee et al., 2005; Allison et al, 2002; Kelleher and Pausch, 2005). "A language that requires significant notational overhead to solve even trivial problems forces the language rather than the techniques of problem-solving to become the object of study" (Zelle, 1999).

### 5.2.2 Clear problem-solving principles

A teaching language should have attributes that help teach fundamentals of all programming tasks. This is the argument used by Wirth (1993), Kölling et al. (1995), and all the other inventors of languages designed for classroom use, and is exemplified by proponents of the various 'pure' teaching languages. The argument quickly becomes one that urges use of a language not common in industry. Some urge development of a new teaching language to meet the needs for teaching, one that does not have to be a real world production language and thus can avoid the compromises in conceptual cleanness for efficiency that cause many of the problems with existing languages (Kölling et al., 1995).
## 6. Primary selection criterion

The relevant importance ascribed to both the pragmatic and practical approaches is illustrated by a recent survey of academics, shown in Table 3. The primary reason for language selection reported by the survey is marketability, cited by 56.1% of the respondents, followed by pedagogical benefits, cited by 33.3% of the academics.

<table><caption>Table 3: Reasons for choosing language (de Raadt et al. 2003b)</caption><tr><td>Used in industry / Marketable</td><td>56.1%</td></tr><tr><td>Pedagogical benefits of language</td><td>33.3%</td></tr><tr><td>Structure of degree/dept politics</td><td>26.3%</td></tr><tr><td>OO language</td><td>26.3%</td></tr><tr><td>GUI interface</td><td>10.5%</td></tr><tr><td>Availability/Cost to students</td><td>8.8%</td></tr><tr><td>Easy to find appropriate texts</td><td>3.5%</td></tr><tr><td>OS/Machine limitations of dept</td><td>1.8%</td></tr></table>

## 7. Caveats

The task of anticipating industry needs is complex. Emigh (2001) points out that four to five years pass between when a student begins a program of study and when he or she attains a position requiring programming skills. Even if a curriculum teaches a newer programming language, there is no guarantee that employers will still be looking for that language when the student enters the work force. Further, some trends are difficult to understand. Currently in Australia there seems to be a demand for multi-skilled programmers (de Raadt et al. 2003a). The average advertisement required 1.84 languages. 48% of jobs required more than one language. C++ appeared as a requirement in around 30% of advertisements, as did Java. Visual Basic was next with 21%, followed by C with 17% (de Raadt et al. 2003b). The Gottliebsen reports (Gottliebsen 1999; Gottliebsen 2001) on job advertisements in Australia for a sample of years shows 128 languages advertised in 1999, 3822 positions for C++, 2555 for Visual Basic, 1052 for Java, and 4678 for COBOL. By 2001 there were 206 languages in demand by industry, with 4359 positions for C++, 2680 for Java, 3369 for Visual Basic, and 1087 for COBOL.

An interesting omission from most programming language selection approaches is the ability to produce output using the language. Experiments such as that conducted by Zeigler (1995) could be used to help decide the issue. The same 60 programmers developed code in both Ada and C, the same work environment was used, as were the same debugging tools, same editors, same testing tools, and the same design methodology. Most of these programmers had masters degrees in computer science, and the more experienced programmers tended to work more in C. When first hired, 75% of the programmers knew C, while only 25% knew Ada. Despite the bias in C's favor, the experiment showed that the cost of coding in Ada is about half the cost of coding in C, because code written in Ada contained 70% less bugs discovered before product delivery and 90% less bugs discovered after product delivery (Zeigler, 1995). Note that this approach is limited by the shear quantity of programming languages
available, well into the thousands today. A one-to-one comparison of all possible
candidates cannot possibly be preformed.

Student perceptions also play a part in this debate. There exist several languages designed for teaching (e.g. Pascal, LOGO), but any department using one of these today would be an object of ridicule (Jenkins, 2002). It is true that programming languages designed for teaching purposes are not used to any extent by industry. Therefore student perception is that these languages are of little practical worth and they further assume that, in general, they lack the advanced facilities of other languages (Gee et al., 2005). If that argument were to be carried to absurdity then the overwhelming choice would be COBOL, which now has an installed base of "more than 200 billion lines of code, and 5 billion lines of COBOL are written every year" (Langley, 2004).

As noted earlier, Parker et al. (2006a, 2006b) propose a set of criteria for the selection of a programming language in an academic setting. Their work is based on papers by researchers in both Australia and the United States. Each of the criteria has been used in one or more previous studies that evaluate programming languages. This extended set of selection criteria points to a more formal and mature approach to language selection. As our current period moves into history, we may be able to see the early years of the twenty-first century as a time of fundamental change in language choice.

8. Conclusion

While there have been various differences throughout the years between Australia and the United States in the teaching of programming languages, there is a pattern that seems culturally independent. Across the two countries there have been, and still exist, two primary approaches to language selection. The pragmatic approach recommends choosing a language that will enhance student employability. The pedagogical approach insists that the language used in introductory programming classes should be designed for teaching programming concepts and problem solving and should minimize complexities so that more time can be spent on developing design skills. There has been no consensus on which approach is optimal, but the ultimate lesson is that neither approach is sufficient by itself.

There are additional critical factors that must be considered when selecting a
programming language. Recent studies have examined a variety of factors that must
be taken into account, and while pragmatic and pedagogical concerns are still near the
forefront, they must be tempered by an awareness that other factors impact the
selection process. The bottom line is that academics must carefully assess the best
interests of the students, weigh all variables in the language selection process such as
those listed by Parker et al. (2006a, 2006b), and choose a language accordingly. As
Johnson (1995) points out, "*the greatest danger to our university system is the
lemming-like rush to do the same thing, to be one with the crowd, to be part of the
current fashion industry of computing*".
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