15 Oct
2010
15 Oct
'10
9:45 a.m.
Excerpts from david's message of 2010-10-15 09:21:34 +0200:
Philipp Überbacher wrote:
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.
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.