9 May
2010
9 May
'10
11:21 a.m.
There is now a degrading of the term programming to
include entering =
data on things like an on board computer of a car to configuring =
spreadsheets and designing web pages.
I (and every other hardware person I know) would use the term
'programming an EPROM' to mean 'loading the bytes into it', even if what
we are loading is, say, the pattens for a character generator.
However, in the context of 'learning to program' or 'learnign
programming' or whatever, I think it should imply learning to use a
turing-complete (apart from memroy size :-)) language. There are plenty
to choose from. It should also cover the much more inportant questions
of how to choose an algorithm, how to split up a problem into logical
steps, and so on. If you can do that you can probably learn just aobut
any language in an afternoon.
How can BASIC not be taught? Every computer has
it's own version of =
BASIC,
Sorry I have to disagree there. There are MANY computers including =
modern ones which do not support BASIC. If you restrict it to modern =
desktop and laptop machines then you are probably correct but you are =
ignoring many pre 1980 machines and nearly all the embedded computers =
like PIC chips. Or Pascal. I think almost any block structured
language is better for =
beginners than Basic.
There are block-structured versions of BASIC...
I am not sure that the choice of language is that important. You can
write clean, maintainable code in any language. You can write opaque
spaghetti in any languag. And the real skills (mentioned earlier) are
pretty much language-independant.
-tony