[LAU] OT: C or C++?

[david]

Philipp Überbacher wrote:
> 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.

My limited experience with programming languages is that the important 
thing to learn are the concepts underlying all of them. I think that's 
where languages like Pascal might be good, since they're intended for that.

Once you have the concepts, learning another language is just a matter 
of vocabulary.

My first programming was in BASIC, but I preferred Forth. I can read C, 
Java and Javascript. PERL completely eludes my comprehension. I can do 
basic stuff in Postscript or PHP.

I've thought about Ruby on Rails, or maybe Python.

My sister had to write a C compiler when getting her Finite Mathematics 
degree. She's probably learned and forgotten more programming languages 
than I've even heard of!

-- 
David
gnome at hawaii.rr.com
authenticity, honesty, community