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(Submission #34)
In the broad field of computer science, one of the few sources of fundamental concepts that help us to characterize and to think about problems across its subdisciplines is that of programming languages. The field of programming languages provides us with the best understood mechanisms we have for rigorously specifying and reasoning about software systems. Moreover, the concepts that have been developed for characterizing programming languages have provided us with insights and mechanisms for reasoning about the behaviors of all computations. By failing to expose computer science majors to these concepts, we are depriving them of critical knowledge of their chosen field, making them less effective in their profession, whether they become software developers or researchers (or both). In this paper, I discuss some of the most critical topics in programming languages that every computer science major should learn, and why they are important.
connection with other computer science curriculum
examples highlighting programming language relevance
evaluation of current curriculum
essential programming language concepts
[Paper (PDF)]
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