Re: octave tutorial

[Steve C. Thompson]

> There is a big debate in our department (like many others) as to
> the choice of language to teach intro to computers. The current winner
> is Java.
You should tell them that Java isn't free software and the University
shouldn't support it.  Print out The Java Trap
(http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/java-trap.html) and take it to the next
faculty meeting.

Steve


On Apr 26 11:31AM, Andy Adler wrote:
> On Tue, 26 Apr 2005, Brian Blais wrote:
> 
> > While we're on the topic of teaching using Octave, I am going to be
> > using octave this fall semester for teaching an intro to programming
> > course.  I have written a lab manual of sorts, which you can have a look
> > at.  http://web.bryant.edu/~bblais/octave
> >
> > I took an approach which I haven't seen for octave or matlab before.
> > Rather than jump into matrices immediately, I treat the language as any
> > other, introducing the language structures first, and then vectors and
> > matrices later. It's still a bit rough, and kind of drops off at the
> > end, but it is a work in progress and may be useful to someone out there.
> 
> There is a big debate in our department (like many others) as to
> the choice of language to teach intro to computers. The current winner
> is Java.
> 
> When I want to give my computer science colleagues a _nudge_, I
> suggest that they should use Matlab/Octave. It normally gets them
> quite upset, even though it would actually be a fairly good choice,
> since it has all the beginer features without many of the strange
> complexities. Additionally, many 3rd and 4th year electrical
> engineering courses assume the students can use Matlab - but it
> is never taught to them.
> 
> I'm surprised that you could get a choice for octave through the
> politics. How did you do it?
> 
> --
> Andy Adler <address@hidden> 1(613)562-5800x6218
> 
> 
> 
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> Octave is freely available under the terms of the GNU GPL.
> 
> Octave's home on the web:  http://www.octave.org
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> 



-------------------------------------------------------------
Octave is freely available under the terms of the GNU GPL.

Octave's home on the web:  http://www.octave.org
How to fund new projects:  http://www.octave.org/funding.html
Subscription information:  http://www.octave.org/archive.html
-------------------------------------------------------------