A Formal Process for Programming Language Evaluation for Introductory Courses

Abstract

Executive SummaryThe selection of a programming language for introductory courses has long been an informal process involving faculty evaluation, discussion, and consensus. 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. Establishing a structured approach to the selection of a programming language would enable a more thorough evaluation of the available options and a more easily supportable selection. Developing and documenting an instrument and a methodology for language selection will allow the process to be more easily repeated in the future.The objectives of this research are to: i) identify criteria for faculty use when selecting a computer programming language for an introductory course in computer programming; ii) develop an instrument that facilitates the assignment of weights to each of those selection criterion to determine their relative importance in the selection process, and; iii) allow various computer programming languages to be scored according to those selection criteria. A set of criteria for the selection of a programming language for introductory courses proposed in a previous paper is briefly reviewed here, with each criterion accompanied with a definition and justification. Readers are referred to the source paper for a complete discussion and literature review.In order to test the validity of these criteria a pilot study was conducted. That study revealed that the number of languages being evaluated by a respondent should be limited, and better guidance in the form of criterion explanation and rating guidance are necessary. Further, some users found the number of criteria daunting, and some of those criteria overlap, causing a language to be evaluated multiple times on what should be a single criterion. At the same a few additional criteria were proposed by study participants.As a result of these findings, instrument refinements were made. Evaluators are now restricted to assessing only languages with which they are quite familiar in order to address not only the issue of quantity, but also inadequate familiarMaterial published as part of this journal, either on-line or in print, is copyrighted by the Informing Science Institute. Permission to make digital or paper copy of part or all of these works for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that the copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage AND that copies 1) bear this notice in full and 2) give the full citation on the first page. It is permissible to abstract these works so long as credit is given. To copy in all other cases or to republish or to post on a server or to redistribute to lists requires specific permission and payment of a fee. Contact Publisher@InformingScience.org to request redistribution permission. A Formal Language Selection Process 134ity. In addition, the selection criteria were analyzed and those with commonalities were grouped together, a...