Abstract:

In this paper an insight into the awareness of the programming language Python and other ones among engineering students from a private university of Peru is provided. Python is a programming language widely used in many research fields, especially in the fields of physical sciences and engineering. Hence this computational tool can be of great benefit to Peruvian universities looking not only to be officially authorized and recognized as research universities but also to improve their research output in the aforementioned fields of research. In order to assess the knowledge of Python and other programming languages among computer science and electronic engineering students, a survey was carried out in a Peruvian private university. The surveyed populations reached a total of 191 engineering students, among men and women. The survey was made up of 12 questions and as a main result of this, it was discovered a lack of awareness of Python among the surveyed students. The knowledge of Python among the 20.9% of the students surveyed, which ranged from the first until the tenth semester, was mainly a basic one, whereas only 0.5% of the total population mentioned an intermediate level. Java, which is also a very popular programming language worldwide, was not well known by some of the students that participated in the study. A considerable percentage of the students, 55.5%, indicated to have a basic knowledge of this, while only 12.0% had an intermediate level. In addition to the aforementioned results, it was possible to observe as well a gender gap in the survey, which unfortunately is still a global trend in many engineering fields. Overall, this study can serve as an indicator to show that some higher education institutions in Peru have still some work to do to teach their students better skills at programming in Python and other popular programming languages. By undertaking the foregoing task, these institutions can profit when looking for official recognition as research universities and also will have the chance to provide the students with additional computational tools for their professional lives.

Keywords:

Higher education, programming, programming languages.