3 Jan
2012
3 Jan
'12
4:22 a.m.
On 1/2/2012 8:14 PM, Toby Thain wrote:
On 02/01/12 10:02 PM, Fred Cisin wrote:
He had that lovely combination of clear sight and fearless expression.
If only that particular expression of his was even remotely true :).
- Josh
> Damn
good points.
> I consider BASIC to be an excellent beginner's introduction to
> "what is a program?", etc., so long as they are exposed to other
> languages immediately after grasping the basic principles.
On Mon, 2 Jan 2012, Toby Thain wrote:
Well, there is the "small" problem that
BASIC syntax, data types, and
control structures relate poorly to modern languages and even less to
powerful abstractions. There's not such a huge distance between Fortran
and BASIC!
Djikstra said, "It is virtually impossible to teach good programming
prctices to students with a prior exposure to BASIC; they are mentally
mutilated beyond any hope of regeneration."