All I really need to know I learned in CS1

Abstract

Over the last 45 years as a student and faculty member in Computer Science, I have been involved in learning, teaching, and writing for the CS1 course. I have authored or co-authored textbooks for CS1 in nine different programming languages from Fortran to Java. Each new language was used because of a particular set of features it provided to solve the critical problem in programming or software development of the day. This talk will take a look back at these languages and the extent to which they succeeded. I will also take a look ahead to see what direction CS1 might be taking in the future.