My college programming intro class is C++, which IMO is a total nightmare.
It is not that I don't agree with your point, actually I think It makes perfect sense. Eventually, anyone who considers him/herself as a serious CS student has to get his/her hands dirty with those relative low level languages in order to have a through understanding of what computer really is and in reality how it works.
Ironically, it is this very same reason that makes C++ as a entry point into programming a horrible idea. Because in order to understand it, IMO, a solid understanding of computer architecture is a MUST. Things like how memory is allocated, how call stack works, and why IO interfaces looks like it is now are unrealistically hard to take in a single course for those new comers with definitely zero programming knowledge, who probably would scratch their head out all night wondering why the following code snippet doesn't work (which wasn't valid back then in my freshman year, don't know whether it is valid now):
And as it is a entry level course, usually a lot of details are skipped which makes it even more confusing. Telling from my personal experience, it is really frustrating that I once want to quit programming for good.
Luckily enough, I got to know Python at that time. In relatively short period of time, I could come up with a simple web crawler to scrap and download movie torrent files from the web. This is important to me that for the first time I realize I could do something both INTERESTING and USEFUL with programming language, which in turn gives me the motivation to go back and look at those lessons I run away from.
It is not that I don't agree with your point, actually I think It makes perfect sense. Eventually, anyone who considers him/herself as a serious CS student has to get his/her hands dirty with those relative low level languages in order to have a through understanding of what computer really is and in reality how it works.
Ironically, it is this very same reason that makes C++ as a entry point into programming a horrible idea. Because in order to understand it, IMO, a solid understanding of computer architecture is a MUST. Things like how memory is allocated, how call stack works, and why IO interfaces looks like it is now are unrealistically hard to take in a single course for those new comers with definitely zero programming knowledge, who probably would scratch their head out all night wondering why the following code snippet doesn't work (which wasn't valid back then in my freshman year, don't know whether it is valid now):
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/737240/c-c-array-size-at-...
And as it is a entry level course, usually a lot of details are skipped which makes it even more confusing. Telling from my personal experience, it is really frustrating that I once want to quit programming for good.
Luckily enough, I got to know Python at that time. In relatively short period of time, I could come up with a simple web crawler to scrap and download movie torrent files from the web. This is important to me that for the first time I realize I could do something both INTERESTING and USEFUL with programming language, which in turn gives me the motivation to go back and look at those lessons I run away from.