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Hm. "academic formation"? Do you mean a school, college or other academic body perhaps?

If so, of the two possible interpretations of your question:

[the affect of] using Perl on a school...

Or

...[the affect on] a school, of using Perl...

only the latter really makes any sense, so I'd translate your question into

What are the advantages and benefits of school or college teaching Perl to it's students.

Again, making the assumption that you are talking about the advantages to the students and teaching staff rather than any administrative advantages, my answer would be:

Perl is a very easy langauge to get started with. It also comes with a huge body of very powerful components that are free to download and use. This means that even those with no previous experience of programming can very rapidly be writing short, uncomplicate programs that do very real, interesting and powerful things.

The short learning curve required to get something simple going, means that students are more likely to get "hooked by the programmming bug" than if their first experience of programming is one of the drier, more esoteric "teaching langauges".

Used correctly (by the teaching staff), Perl is more likely to engender the enthusiasmm of the students to want to learn programming. This is, of itself, probably the greatest single advantage that any academic body can gain from the use of any teaching tool. It is also the greatest gift any teacher can give his students. Once a student wants to learn something, the battle is half (if not more) won.

To temper that recommendation: Perl should not be the only langauge taught. As a language, it is too loose, and too forgiving of bad programming and sloppy technique to form the only basis of a student's learning. It needs to be combine with a language that requires and instills discipline. Something with strong typing, comprehensive error detection and preferably, a fairly low-level view of the machine. Modula, Pascal or Java (in roughly my personal order of preference) would make good companions to Perl.

Only by experiencing the constraints, and understanding the low-level of one or more other languages, will the student learn to appreciate (and use correctly) the power and flexibility of Perl.


Examine what is said, not who speaks.
"Efficiency is intelligent laziness." -David Dunham
"Think for yourself!" - Abigail

In reply to Re: Academic Formation by BrowserUk
in thread Teaching Perl inside an Academic Course by Mago

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