[LAU] OT: C or C++?

[Philipp Überbacher]

Excerpts from david's message of 2010-10-15 09:21:34 +0200:
> Philipp Überbacher wrote:
> 
> > About half of my fellow students are total beginners who've never
> > written or even read a single line of code. To them everything is new,
> > and they need to filter the essentials from the distractions, so less
> > distractions is a real help.
> 
> Perhaps that's why BASIC stands for "Beginners All-Purpose Symbolic 
> Instruction Code"?
> 
>  From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASIC:
> 
> The eight design principles of BASIC were:
> 1. Be easy for beginners to use.
> 2. Be a general-purpose programming language.
> 3. Allow advanced features to be added for experts (while keeping the 
> language simple for beginners).
> 4. Be interactive.
> 5. Provide clear and friendly error messages.
> 6. Respond quickly for small programs.
> 7. Not to require an understanding of computer hardware.
> 7. Shield the user from the operating system.

Maybe. I've never written a single line of basic, but I guess many of
todays programmers have. Pascal might be another language of this kind.
I wonder whether it would be more sensible to start with a teaching
language like that and switch to something more common a little bit
later.