teaching languages [forked from Re: Where are the software engineers of tomorrow?]

[James G. Sack (jim)]

Christopher Smith wrote:
> Tracy R Reed wrote:
>>..
>> I don't understand the confusion over pointers. I took the data
>> structures class, made linked lists. doubly linked lists, queues,
>> stacks, hash tables, etc. etc. It wasn't really a big deal.
> Yeah, and you can learn how to make all of those things in LISP & Scheme
> from cons cells, or in Smalltalk & Java from arrays and objects. Really,
> aside from some funky hacks like using xor to make compact doubly linked
> lists (and even then), it's hard to imagine a self-respecting language
> that you can't teach data structures and algorithms with, regardless of
> whether they have pointer arithmetic.

Nicely put TR & CS.

I assume most people would say that any self respecting curriculum would
more-or-less thoroughly cover data structures and algorithms.

I wonder what variations would show up in the answer to:

==> What language is best for teaching data structures and algorithms?

Regards,
..jim