3 Jan
2012
3 Jan
'12
1:33 p.m.
On 03/01/12 12:02 AM, Ian King wrote:
On 1/2/12 8:22 PM, "Josh Dersch"<derschjo
at mail.msu.edu> wrote:
Most long-time imperative programmers who seriously studies The
Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs will come face to face
with the essential truth of Dijkstra's remark. The consequent
un-learning is just as valuable as the learning...
--T
On 1/2/2012 8:14 PM, Toby Thain wrote:
Quotation from "How do we tell truths that might hurt?", Edsger
W.Dijkstra, 18 June 1975, as retrieved from
http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/ewd498.html on
2-JAN-2012:
"It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that
have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are
mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration."
Of course, there are people who think if it doesn't look like C/C++, it
ain't programmin'. :-) (Of course, not talking about you, Josh - just
say lambda!) On 02/01/12 10:02 PM, Fred Cisin wrote:
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."
He had that lovely combination of clear sight and fearless expression.
My favorite has always been (ibid):
"The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be
regarded as a criminal offense." -- Ian