4 ms·

Wow, the guy really is teaching his students how to program using his side-project language?! Man, if I was the student, I would be pretty upset. There are ple

by d--b 10y ago

Wow, the guy really is teaching his students how to program using his side-project language?! Man, if I was the student, I would be pretty upset. There are plenty of popular programming languages to learn. Each one has its own caveats. It's hard enough to learn CaML, or C, or Lisp, but these are at least used in the world! Why would the student need to learn a programming language that no-one uses? It's either that the teacher is using them as guinea pigs, which is bad enough, or using them advertisement, which is even worse. All in all, he's certainly not making them a favor!

leephillips 10y ago
Was Knuth wrong to make up a language to use in his Art of Computer Programming books?
JoeAltmaier 10y ago
...or teaching them facility in learning a language, which is more valuable than knowing any particular language.
dspillett 10y ago
> Why would the student need to learn a programming language that no-one uses? The same reasons many examples in textbooks and documentation are in pseudo-code. Sometimes you want to learn general concepts and don't want implementation oddities of specific language(s). Theory first then practice. That way you are more likely to end up with a skillset you can easily transfer between languages/frameworks/platforms/other. Essentially his language is the same as any other "made up" pseudo-code syntax.
- d--b 10y ago
  Well, yes and no. The syntax itself looks very verbose, and the language seems to have a lot of idioms of its own.
- bmm6o 10y ago
  There are plenty of oddities in that syntax. I can get behind pseudo-code, but this seems to not be a solution to the problem.
ChoHag 10y ago
If what you glean from a programming course is a language's syntax you haven't learned how to programme. As long as the map between the language you are taught programming with and the cpu architecture it's running on is clear, the syntax is irrelevant.
- tonyedgecombe 10y ago
  True, but if you are going to learn the syntax for a language it may as well be one that is useful elsewhere.
  - d--b 10y ago
    my point exactly. thanks
  - ChoHag 10y ago
    Why?
mcherm 10y ago
Or maybe the teacher is evaluating the quality of his side-project language for teaching and is offering free programming education to students in order to evaluate it. Honestly, I don't think there are many jobs out there hiring for Mu programmers, but I ALSO don't think that fact makes learning in Mu a bad idea, and I CERTAINLY don't have any objection to what the teacher is doing!
coreyp_1 10y ago
What I normally say about university is: "We teach you everything you need to know, and nothing you can use." That would seem to fit the bill here.

by d--b 10y ago

leephillips 10y ago

Was Knuth wrong to make up a language to use in his Art of Computer Programming books?

JoeAltmaier 10y ago

...or teaching them facility in learning a language, which is more valuable than knowing any particular language.

dspillett 10y ago

> Why would the student need to learn a programming language that no-one uses? The same reasons many examples in textbooks and documentation are in pseudo-code. Sometimes you want to learn general concepts and don't want implementation oddities of specific language(s). Theory first then practice. That way you are more likely to end up with a skillset you can easily transfer between languages/frameworks/platforms/other. Essentially his language is the same as any other "made up" pseudo-code syntax.

d--b 10y ago
Well, yes and no. The syntax itself looks very verbose, and the language seems to have a lot of idioms of its own.
bmm6o 10y ago
There are plenty of oddities in that syntax. I can get behind pseudo-code, but this seems to not be a solution to the problem.

ChoHag 10y ago

If what you glean from a programming course is a language's syntax you haven't learned how to programme. As long as the map between the language you are taught programming with and the cpu architecture it's running on is clear, the syntax is irrelevant.

tonyedgecombe 10y ago
True, but if you are going to learn the syntax for a language it may as well be one that is useful elsewhere.
- d--b 10y ago
  my point exactly. thanks
- ChoHag 10y ago
  Why?

mcherm 10y ago

Or maybe the teacher is evaluating the quality of his side-project language for teaching and is offering free programming education to students in order to evaluate it. Honestly, I don't think there are many jobs out there hiring for Mu programmers, but I ALSO don't think that fact makes learning in Mu a bad idea, and I CERTAINLY don't have any objection to what the teacher is doing!

coreyp_1 10y ago

What I normally say about university is: "We teach you everything you need to know, and nothing you can use." That would seem to fit the bill here.