Pülz, Michael
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Java or Python: which programming language is more suitable for an introductory business IT course?
2021, Pülz, Michael
This paper is about the question which programming language lends itself better to being the first programming language to learn: Java or Python. In Switzerland, the generation entering university usually has had no preceding contact to programming. This topic has only been introduced lately into the secondary education curriculum. The generation starting their Bachelor programs today (and for at least another five to ten years) usually had no training in programming (Ristic, 2017). From experience, we know that students of the “BSc in Business Information Technology” program struggle primarily with mathematics and programming. About 40-50 % of the students fail one or both of these subjects (even more in programming than in math). Thus, the question arises if the choice of the first programming language (Java for the time being) plays a role in this high failure rate. This paper tries to explore some of these questions. First, an analysis of the currently taught introductory programming languages at universities will be presented. Then, research about the suitability of certain languages as a first tool in undergraduate programs will be summarized (e.g. Alzahrani et al., 2018). Finally, conclusions are drawn, and implementation steps are outlined.
Programming in an undergraduate business curriculum
2018, Pülz, Michael
This paper is about teaching programming to business students on an undergraduate level. These students tend to consider information technology (IT) and information systems to be rather abstract and difficult subjects. Despite the fact that young business undergraduates have a good grasp of the use of modern information technology, their interest in how this technology actually works seems to be quite limited (Burns, Gao, Sherman, Vengerov, & Klein, 2014). The approach described in this paper is to use an information systems standard textbook such as Laudon and Laudon and the standard curriculum of a foundational information systems course (Topi et al., 2010) as a basis for designing the course curriculum, but to somewhat limit the time spent on these subjects. The time saved is then spent on teaching some computational thinking (Wing, 2006) and programming (coding, using Python). In the past two years, the author has taught this content to 127 undergraduate students in a trinational Bachelor program