[LAU] OT: C or C++?

[Philipp Überbacher]

Excerpts from Kris Calabio's message of 2010-10-14 19:22:32 +0200:
> What are everyone's honest thoughts on Java?  When I started Computer Science at my school, they were teaching Java.  Personally, I thought it nice to learn from.  I then moved on to C and C++ pretty smoothly.  (Though I still have alot to learn in C++).
> 
> -Kris

I'm not experienced in any language but I've dabbled with a few, and
imho java and how it's taught here is far too complicated or rather
distracting.

The first thing newbies see, before hello world, is a beast like
eclipse, which alone causes a whole bunch of problems. Then they have
to mess with packages, and classes, and objects, although they teach it
here by saying "take this as given, ignore it for now". The next thing
they see are some funky classes that allow proper input/output because
java doesn't seem to have that. Only then they get to start programing
and can deal with javas built in funkyness.
What does the following example evaluate to?
   1.2+3+"||"+3+2.1

I think there's far too much distracting mess to sort out before you
even get to programing, so I don't think it's a good teaching language
(for total beginners at least).