Schools try to teach at a pace designed to fit a fixed amount of material into a fixed amount of time, and the content is often designed to satisfy some arbitrary goal (such as passing an AP exam). It's an attempt at a one-size-fits-all solution.

Is Perl the best language to teach CS? I don't think so. It's too easy to get sidetracking into nifty features, losing the essense of what's being taught. (C++ isn't any better as a teaching language, though with C++ you're trying to get past the language to solve a problem, as opposed to having lots of ways to solve a problem, each one a bit shorter than the previous.)

Better, I think, to treat Perl as a self-paced, independent study project. Pick a problem to solve that interests you, and learn enough Perl to solve it. Then learn a bit more Perl to solve it better. Then study how others have solved similar problems, and try again. Read articles. (merlyn has some great ones to study on his site.) Learn about benchmarking and profiling, profile your code. Find a good Perl programmer and ask them to review your code. Post it here. Take in the feedback.

That's the way to learn.

As a Senior in High School currently taking the AP Computer Science course, I can readily associate with the above sentiments.

My biggest beef with the course is that, despite being called AP computer science, that's not what they're teaching. They're teaching "advanced -- but crippled -- C++ using the AP board's crutches." For those that arn't familiar with the course, it depends very heavily on a group of "AP classes" such as apstring, apvector, apmatrix, apqueue, and so on. Thus, people learn to write code which depends on classes they'll never see again. This is, needless to say, a Bad Thing.

My other problem follows directly from this. The course does teach how to use these structures -- but not why and when to use them, nor how they are done "behind the scenes." It is my belief that programming depends not just on how to twiddle the dials on the black box -- but more importantly, on knowing when to use which dial, and how each one works. Unfortunatly, this is apparently the last thing on the college board's mind..

This leads me to their recent decision to switch the course over to Java, starting in 2003-2004. The parts of Java left out also seem to be fairly off-the-wall -- still not talking about the values of pre- and post-increment?

</rant>

Getting back to the point, I think that AP CS is fairly fundamentally broken. Furthermore, given the size and ponderousness of the organization behind it, it is unlikely to change. Thus, I would join with others in suggesting that we try to bring Perl into the school systems; but one reason would be to help fill the mental gap left by other computer science courses. Given that Perl is rather high level (compared to some others, at least), as well as being fast to write short snippets in, I would think it a perfect fit for this problem. Plus, I happen to think Perl is cool. ;>

 
perl -e 'print "I love $^X$\"$]!$/"#$&V"+@( NO CARRIER'

I would like to speak in support of Chmrr's position here not because I've taken AP Computer Science, but because I have seen its consequences.

I'm a junior in college now and past most of the basic CSci courses required for the major. Now in my classes I'm starting to see a lot of people who never had to take the beginning courses that I did because they got out of them through AP....and it seems to me that a lot of these people didn't get the same fundamentals that I got through my first university CSci classes. This slows the pace of the class down and prevents my professors from covering all their material. Now this obviously isn't AP's fault completely, but I think their curriculum has had a noticeable effect.

I am all for getting people started in the fundamentals of programming the best way that we can find, and if that means independently encouraging young people to take up Perl, then that's definitely something worth considering.

I'm not sure if the downfall of grasping the fundamentals is having AP computer science courses (which allow students to actually skip the intro to CS in college) in high schools today or if it is just a failure on the part of the schools finding qualified teachers to teach this type of subject to the students with the right curriculum. The main problem seems to be is that the teachers are not teaching the fundamentals or teaching them correctly of the languages to the students. It could be for several reasons:
• not qualified teachers
• the school board misunderstanding of what should be taught and tested
• Or just a terrible curriculum of the courses
In these cases, it's almost not worth having the actual course taught to H.S. students - if what they learn is incorrect or outdated. Not having the basics down is a major downfall to many who try to learn a programming language. Often times, they do not realize that the basics or fundamentals are missing or highly misunderstood until they try to produce an actual program - in which they have severe problems with. So, I guess my thoughts are if they have a program at this level(h.s. and below)..perl, c/c++, or java should not even be taught until they(school administration) have a firm grasp as to what the students are going to be achieving from taking the class, as well as understanding that their course is substituting the intro to cs courses (if the ap tests are passed).

Other than that, I think it'd be a great idea to add perl to the languages being taught in schools.

yeah, im a sophomore in high school, and perl classes would be a great aide in my learning. however, i dont think this is going to happen. the only thing in my whole school that relates to computer programming is one book in the library on how to write fortran 77 code. ive been trying to get a perl class, but there isnt enough support at my school. well, at least you guys are making some progress.

also, in regards to *nix in schools, my admin said they didnt have the time/capabilities to setup *nix boxes, but i brought up the possibility of using *nix bootdisks, such as DLX or Coyote. he said if i wanted to, that was fine, so you could possibly ask your admins about this.

Mr. Zoothornrollo, hit that long lunar note, and let it float.