WHAT PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE SHOULD BE TAUGHT TO COMPUTER SCIENCE STUDENTS? – THAT IS THE QUESTION

The rapid innovations and advances in ICT areas have quickly increased the number of programming languages uses different paradigms. Due to market demand, programming has become one of the basic skills in most computer science and technical faculty curricula. Analysis of study programmes has proven considerable variety in the ways of teaching and the types of programming paradigms and languages used.

This paper undertakes a comparative analysis of contemporary programming languages. After a careful examination of the current curriculum and market demands, a selection was made of the top eight of the Tiobe index programming languages in the last ten years. They included: Java, C, C++, Visual Basic .NET, Python, JavaScript, SQL and PHP. The ratings are based on the number of skilled engineers world-wide, courses and third party vendors.

The objective of this study is to determine which programming language should be taught to computer science students at introductory and advanced level. It should be stated that the lack of understanding of the importance of this question implies failure to progress in computer science education. The paper provides recommendations on the selection of a programming language according to study programme objectives and market demands. They can be used by other universities in the developing of education programmes at various levels of education.