Modula-2 versus C++ as a first programming language—some empirical results
Martin Hitz, Marcus Hudec · ACM SIGCSE Bulletin · 1995
The success of an experiment of using C++ as a first programming language for students of a specific type of computer science is presented. The paper motivates the shift from Modula-2 to C++ in the curriculum, shortly describes the course and discusses the statistical evaluation of the results of the last Modula-2 course and the first C++ course, respectively. The main findings of the study are the fact that in contrast to most expectations, the shift from a typical “educational” language to a much “dirtier” language had no significant effect to the performance of the students taking the course.