Effectively Matching Programming Languages to Introductory Programming Teaching Paradigms

The reach of technology stretches across a wide variety of domains: from the health industry to entertainment and gaming. Software programming undoubtedly plays a major role in modern technology. Therefore, computer science and programming education is of the utmost importance. In our research, we aim to investigate the best approaches and languages to be used to introduce programming to students and others wishing to learn to program. Indeed, there are numerous approaches to learning programming and lots of existing research regarding these approaches. There are also numerous programming languages and types of audiences. We highlight various methods that can be used to teach programming, and how those approaches can best be matched to different programming languages and audiences. We build upon existing research to reach conclusions, and we conduct our own survey that involves computer science students, computer science teachers, and software development professionals. Our goal is not to promote a certain approach or to promote a particular programming language. Rather, we find correlations and provide recommendations regarding which languages are most suitable for different approaches and audiences.