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My anecdotal data appears to point to the opposite. My first language (JS) involved learning: - What is even programming? What is a function? an argument? What

by voz_ 6y ago

My anecdotal data appears to point to the opposite. My first language (JS) involved learning: - What is even programming? What is a function? an argument? What is state? What are types? - JS itself - How browsers work - JQuery (do people still use that?) - NodeJs - How backends work - How databases work Then, the subsequent language, Java, was only different in patterns, paradigms, keywords, and frameworks (at least, at the amateur level I was going at). Args were still args, strings were strings, sure we had classes instead of functions here and there, but for a beginner it was close enough. Java, the second language, was far easier to learn. And so forth, with each language becoming progressively simpler.

mettamage 6y ago
Ha fun! I've had the order switched. I'd argue that you had an easier time. Why? Chrome Dev tools and loosely typed (avoids some beginner questions that'll have easy answers when you have a bit more experience). Also, NodeJS encourages exploring the commandline, Eclipse doesn't.
yomly 6y ago
JS is a really horrible language to learn from the perspective of a teacher. So many concepts dumped on you all at once. Before you even know what a function is, you have the entire DOM API dumped on you and is available in the global scope. If you try to learn OOP in it, you have the choice of trying to grapple with the leaky ES6 class keyword or you get prototypal inheritance and `this` will come up. That said, from a learner's perspective it's great: you have the entire DOM available to you instead of having to learn how to take the car of the cdr of a list and wondering how that has anything to do with building the next Airbnb/Uber of this world... At least with Python/Ruby they commit hard to terseness / fluent interfaces so you have less syntactic noise to deal with, and Haskell commits hard on equational reasoning so you can pick up computation if you've come from a mathsy background. Or Scheme which is as close as you can get to "no syntax" as you can (IMO)
- tiborsaas 6y ago
  I used to teach programming with JS. It was not really a blocker for me at any level. When we hit some quirks I stopped to explain why this is and how it's different in other languages. Maybe because I like JS made me enjoy teaching it as well :)
  - yomly 6y ago
    I actually quite like JS, but I almost feel bad for people who discover it as their first foray into programming. I mean it's great because it makes programming more accessible to non devs. But man is it unfortunate that JS was the language that ended up being the language of the web. The browser is the ultimate interactive development environment. You can literally play with the page in situ. Akin to CAD and Excel (...or Emacs[0]) [0]https://www.gnu.org/gnu/rms-lisp.html https://www.gnu.org/gnu/rms-lisp.html
    - tiborsaas 6y ago
      Don't feel bad, my first language I've ever written programs in was C-64 basic :) I don't know what would have been a better choice, but JS is not bad for a browser language. It had a rough childhood, but turned out to be a decent adult. I still remember VB Script supported in old IE, but then there was JS and I just focused on that. It really made no difference to me since I was able to build cool stuff I wanted to. That brought me joy of creation and that's what mattered, not "that's not OOP like god set in stone". Whatever enables people to be more involved in programming, I consider it as a good thing.

by voz_ 6y ago

mettamage 6y ago

Ha fun! I've had the order switched. I'd argue that you had an easier time. Why? Chrome Dev tools and loosely typed (avoids some beginner questions that'll have easy answers when you have a bit more experience). Also, NodeJS encourages exploring the commandline, Eclipse doesn't.

yomly 6y ago

JS is a really horrible language to learn from the perspective of a teacher. So many concepts dumped on you all at once. Before you even know what a function is, you have the entire DOM API dumped on you and is available in the global scope. If you try to learn OOP in it, you have the choice of trying to grapple with the leaky ES6 class keyword or you get prototypal inheritance and `this` will come up. That said, from a learner's perspective it's great: you have the entire DOM available to you instead of having to learn how to take the car of the cdr of a list and wondering how that has anything to do with building the next Airbnb/Uber of this world... At least with Python/Ruby they commit hard to terseness / fluent interfaces so you have less syntactic noise to deal with, and Haskell commits hard on equational reasoning so you can pick up computation if you've come from a mathsy background. Or Scheme which is as close as you can get to "no syntax" as you can (IMO)

tiborsaas 6y ago
I used to teach programming with JS. It was not really a blocker for me at any level. When we hit some quirks I stopped to explain why this is and how it's different in other languages. Maybe because I like JS made me enjoy teaching it as well :)
- yomly 6y ago
  I actually quite like JS, but I almost feel bad for people who discover it as their first foray into programming. I mean it's great because it makes programming more accessible to non devs. But man is it unfortunate that JS was the language that ended up being the language of the web. The browser is the ultimate interactive development environment. You can literally play with the page in situ. Akin to CAD and Excel (...or Emacs[0]) [0]https://www.gnu.org/gnu/rms-lisp.html https://www.gnu.org/gnu/rms-lisp.html
  - tiborsaas 6y ago
    Don't feel bad, my first language I've ever written programs in was C-64 basic :) I don't know what would have been a better choice, but JS is not bad for a browser language. It had a rough childhood, but turned out to be a decent adult. I still remember VB Script supported in old IE, but then there was JS and I just focused on that. It really made no difference to me since I was able to build cool stuff I wanted to. That brought me joy of creation and that's what mattered, not "that's not OOP like god set in stone". Whatever enables people to be more involved in programming, I consider it as a good thing.