[Jtsummers]

> Yes, but I doubt you had write code to factor a quadratic equation because it's a solved problem and you have libs that will do it for you.

It is not totally unreasonable to expect students in an intro to CS course to have some basic competency in algebra (university dependent). Giving them a problem in a domain they're already familiar with (or that where familiarity can be expected) lets them, in theory, focus on the algorithm/data structure side without having to also be taught the domain. Most of the exercises in a first CS course are solved with libraries (standard in some languages, or 3rd party in others). That doesn't mean it's not useful for developing the knowledge the course is aiming for.

Do you also think we shouldn't teach arithmetic and should only teach using calculators? (You may, actually, I know people who think that way.)

[BiteCode_dev]

No, but I do think an intro to programming should be done without math. You can mix them later, once the students know what's up.

[Jtsummers]

It's silly to make a universal statement like that, that's why I qualified it in my own. Whether or not math should be present in the assignments depends on the university and the background of its students. MIT's SICP could use calculus in its course because the students were either also in calculus or had already taken calculus when they got to the course. It was expected in their situation. Waterluvian, helpfully, clarified that the course they were talking about was for non-CS majors, so whether or not a basic algebra concept is appropriate would depend on the background of those non-CS majors. Are they all STEM majors or 99% STEM majors? Then you can assume they know algebra. Are there more humanities and arts majors? Then you can't, or shouldn't.

Besides, most intro to CS courses also include basic algorithm analysis (that may not be true for the non-major version of the course) which means the course will require the use of at least arithmetic, probably some algebra, and some basic calculus. So why not write programs that make use of math when you're already assuming the students are competent in basic math?

At least at the universities I was familiar with, a non-major first CS/programming course was generally targeted to STEM, but not CS, majors, so again familiarity with algebra would be a reasonable assumption (at GT, these were taken by the various engineering majors and used Matlab as the language of instruction, I think they previously offered Fortran).