(It is very difficult to compare an apple; students need a frame of
reference. They get this only by seeing several apples, or even some apples
and some oranges.
What I find most unsettling about the movement to teach C (or C++) in the
first year is _precisely_ that C/C++ is "needed in later years". Wait a
minute: if this is so, where will the students get the other apples and
oranges? Two weeks of a language in a comparative-languages course is _not_
enough.)
