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Re: Re: Re: "There are some stunningly novel ideas in Perl" -- Paul Graham

by dragonchild (Archbishop)
on Apr 28, 2003 at 17:29 UTC ( [id://253756]=note: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??


in reply to Re: Re: "There are some stunningly novel ideas in Perl" -- Paul Graham
in thread "There are some stunningly novel ideas in Perl" -- Paul Graham

Pascal was an extraordinarily good teaching language for an era where computer time was very scarce and expensive ...

It's the best language for teaching structured top-down programming. It forces the student to do things "The Right Way", vs. hacking around. Later, when the student knows why s/he shouldn't do it "The Right Way", then "The Right Way" takes its place as merely "One Of Many Right Ways". But, that first initiation is still extremely important.

I think that the move colleges are doing to teach in Java or C++ is bad. C++ is an extremely poor language to learn how to program in. It requires too much knowledge on the part of the student and allows too many shortcuts. While that's good for power users, students are, by definition, not power users.

------
We are the carpenters and bricklayers of the Information Age.

Don't go borrowing trouble. For programmers, this means Worry only about what you need to implement.

Please remember that I'm crufty and crochety. All opinions are purely mine and all code is untested, unless otherwise specified.

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Re: Re: Re: Re: "There are some stunningly novel ideas in Perl" -- Paul Graham
by demerphq (Chancellor) on Apr 29, 2003 at 14:59 UTC

    It's the best language for teaching structured top-down programming.

    There I have to disagree. I didnt like Turing a lot, but if I had to teach someone to program and I had a choice between Turing and Pascal, Turing would win hands down. But not being so well known I can see why people might suggest Pascal. :-)


    ---
    demerphq

    <Elian> And I do take a kind of perverse pleasure in having an OO assembly language...

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