3 Jan
2012
3 Jan
'12
3:02 a.m.
> 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."
What's wrong with Scheme?
Pretty good.
IFF they[1] would stop claiming that it is the ONLY language in which it
is possible to solve the problem(s) (traversing a multi-dimensional array)
[1] Clancy and Harvey, who were in charge of lower division undergrad CS
at UC Berkeley, when they switched over; They also said, "NOBODY progams
in assembly any more, nor ever will again."
C,
for example, is the Systems Programming "language of choice",
but as somebody's very first exposure to programming, it will
teach them more about what their frustration tolerance level is
than about programming. Once PAST that initial exposure stage,
C is excellent.
As long as they drop it like a hot potato when they realise they're not
doing "systems programming".