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> We have an unfortunate obsession with form over content I partially agree with this observation but I also think that it’s a bit misleading: especially if us
by klmr 9y ago
> We have an unfortunate obsession with form over content
I partially agree with this observation but I also think that it’s a bit misleading: especially if used, as here, to refer to the distinction between programming languages (and their grammars), rather than paradigms.
In truth, different programming languages are highly coupled to different (classes of) paradigms, and the grammar of a programming language often prescribes or at least culturally supports a given set of paradigms. There might not be as much difference between, say, Pascal and FORTRAN, to use Floyd’s example. But if you asked a professor whether they taught Lisp, Java, Python or Haskell in their introductory programming course would tell you a lot about the paradigms they teach.
- posterboy 9y agoIn High School, I didn't get to see a computer until after the introductory computer science course. And so I would assume that the basics are trivially the same, no matter which compiler is chosen to go along with it. e.g. Stanford switched from Scheme to Python, using the same work book anyway. Does that tell you anything? Probably that there's a Lisp in every language.
- nerpderp83 9y agoI think verbosity occurs when the language can't easily represent the paradigm. And rather than use the proper paradigm, programmers do what is easy to represent. Lightpost fallacy of hammer utilization. When we have better language creation tools we will get more outsiders, who will bring more paradigms. One thing I wished was addressed in general in all of education was in the style and analysis on the ways of solving problems. Something like solution formulation aesthetics.