Unit 13: Top Programming Languages

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This unit discusses which programming languages are the most popular, what they are used for, and why.

Did you know? The following activities can be customized as desired by the teacher or school pedagogue.

Basic activities (computer-graded)

Vocabulary Builder Activity

Students will learn the following key terms and phrases:

Reading Activity: Top 10 Most Popular Programming Languages

Students will be able to correctly answer true/false questions after reading and listening to topical short articles and dialogs featuring topical vocabulary.

There are hundreds of programming languages in use today. How can you know which one to learn first? How do you know which ones are the best for your IT field of choice? Well, I can't answer that question for you. But why not start by learning one of the top 10 most popular ones? That way you will always be able to get a job in the IT industry. Learning a programming language is not easy, but it can… Continue

Multiple Choice Activity

Students will be able to select the best match between unit terms and their definitions.

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Listening Comprehension Activity

Students will be able to listen to short audio clips in English and then spell them correctly.

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Spelling and Recognition

Students will be able to identify and spell a vocabulary term correctly given only the definition.

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Advanced activities (optionally teacher-graded)

Speaking Practice Activity

Students will be able to speak and record 5 example sentences from the unit vocabulary and then submit them for grading by the classroom teacher. If no teacher is available or desired, then the students will be shown good examples of other students' work.

Bash is an acronym for "Bourne-again shell", a joke based on the name of the Bourne shell that it replaces and on the Christian religious term "born again".

C is the standard example of a procedural language.

Pure object-oriented programming languages such as Ruby and Smalltalk do not contain any primitive types.

The computer science professor predicted that as processor speeds increased, Java would eventually replace C++ in application development.

The professor told us that officially JavaScript should be called ECMAScript, but that few people do so in practice.

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Writing Practice Activity

Students will write a short essay to be graded by the teacher. If no teacher is available or desired, then the student is shown previous examples of other writings by students.

Which programming languages do you already know? Which ones do you want to learn? Why?

Which language do you think is best for making banking software? Web pages? Games? Text processing?

Computer languages such as FORTRAN and COBOL were once very popular, but not so much anymore. Why do you think they lost popularity? Which languages in the top 10 do you think will drop in 10 years? Which one will gain in popularity?

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