Abstract: Throughout the 1990s, Richard Reid of Michigan State University maintained a list showing the first programming language used in introductory programming courses taken by Computer science and information systems majors; it was updated for several years afterwards by Frances Van Scoy of West Virginia University. However, it has been 5 years since the last Reid List was released. An updated list was compiled revealing the most popular programming language. The resultant correspondence with faculty members at many of the 410 Reid List colleges and universities indicates several trends, some of which are contradictory, as well as the reasons for the language choices of the participating schools. We present several conclusions from our findings.

Keywords: introductory programming, programming languages, JAVA, Objects Early Approach

Download this article: ISEDJ - V10 N4 Page 24.pdf

Recommended Citation: Siegfried, R. M., Greco, D., Miceli, N., Siegfried, J. (2012). Whatever Happened to Richard Reid’s List of First Programming Languages?. Information Systems Education Journal, 10(4) pp 24-30. http://isedj.org/2012-10/ ISSN: 1545-679X. (A preliminary version appears in The Proceedings of ISECON 2011)