RE: Perl, children and foreign languages

Ilam currently learning Perl as my first language, and enjoy it immensely. Of course I learned English as my native toungue, which makes it a bit different.

My question for you t0mas, is why is it neccessary for your child to understand the meaning of a word/function/subroutine/operator in order to use it? If the "word" 'dsfg' did the same thing as 'print', it wouldn't make any difference to me besides the fact that it would take a little more effort to remember what exactly it did.

redmist
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Comment on RE: Perl, children and foreign languages

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RE: RE: Perl, children and foreign languages by t0mas (Priest) on Sep 12, 2000 at 10:18 UTC
In my experiense, knowing what the word means makes it easier to remember. When you first start learning, for example, *nix commands, pwd is an acronym for 'print working directory', cd is an acronym for 'change directory' and that's easy to remember. The strange word or acronym is nailed to an explanation in your brain. The command names make sense, thus making them easy to remember. If you don't know what print means it's hard to use it in the right context. You start wondering "What was that command I had to use to output the variable?" instead of "How do I solve the problem faced?" My concern is that it doesn't take a little more effort, but rather much more effort, to remember that dsfg should be used rather that print. I think that no one would want to learn a programming language where the syntax didn't make sense. /brother t0mas	[reply]
(redmist) RE: RE: RE: Perl, children and foreign languages by redmist (Deacon) on Sep 12, 2000 at 10:37 UTC
Good point. After all, one of the great things about Perl is that it is a natural language, hence easing use. Message recieved, zero distortion. redmist redmist.dyndns.org email::redmist	[reply]
RE: (redmist) RE: RE: RE: Perl, children and foreign languages by MF (Scribe) on Sep 19, 2000 at 23:07 UTC
May I add that Perl is a language in itself? One that has to be learnt no matter what native language you use for communication? I learned DOS commands before I knew any English, and actually, using computers and playing adventure games taught me English. I'd say teach your son Perl the way it's supposed to be taught, it will even make school easier for him :)	[reply]


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