Stanford is NOT switching from Java to JavaScript: I was mistaken

Last April, I wrote a blog post saying that Stanford was abandoning Java for JavaScript in their intro course (see post here).  The post was initiated by an article in the Stanford Daily. The post caused quite an uproar, way more than I expected. More than one Stanford faculty member reached out to me about it.  In particular, Marty Stepp told me that I was definitely wrong, that Stanford would mostly be teaching Java in a year. I promised that if I was wrong a year later, I would write another post correcting my first post.

It’s been a year, and I was wrong. Stanford is NOT abandoning Java for JavaScript.

I’m glad I was wrong, but it has nothing to do with Java or JavaScript.

I heard about the possible switch to JavaScript several months before from a Stanford faculty member.  When I saw the Stanford Daily article, I thought it was okay to talk about it. Marty told me at the time that I was wrong, and that the article was ill informed.  Still another Stanford faculty member wrote me about the tensions over this issue.

A lesson I learned from Mike Lach and others involved in the NGSS roll out is that all curricular decisions are political decisions.  A framework might be based on scientific expertise, but what is actually taught is about choice and vision — different opinions of how we interpret where we are now and what we want in the future.  If you haven’t heard about the politics of curricular choices before, I highly recommend Schoolhouse Politics.

I am not at Stanford, so I don’t know how curricular decisions have been made and were made here. I based my post on talking with some Stanford faculty and reading the Stanford Daily article.  I predicted that the forces pushing for JavaScript would end up changing the curriculum. They didn’t (or haven’t so far).  The Stanford lecturers are excellent, and they are the ones actually teaching those classes. I’m glad that they get to continue teaching the classes the way that they think is most valuable.

Below is what Marty wrote me about the courses at Stanford, and a link to the Stanford course offerings, showing that Stanford is still primarily a Java house:

This calendar year our CS1 Java course is still quite clearly the dominant course. Nick Parlante is also teaching two smaller experimental offerings of a Python class in our winter and spring quarters. There may be another experimental JavaScript and/or Python course on the books for fall, but it certainly will not be the main class; the CS1 in Java will continue to be so throughout all of the next academic year. Currently no plan is under way to change that, though we certainly are open to evolving our courses in the long term like any other school would be. I would like to note that the state of intro at Stanford is exactly as was described to you by myself and others 10 months ago.

http://explorecourses.stanford.edu/search?q=cs%20106a&view=catalog&academicYear&catalog&page=2&filter-coursestatus-Active=on&collapse