4 ms·

I've got to say, if you're struggling with C's syntax, you should worry less about becoming "a hacker" and more with "just becoming a programmer".

• krainboltgreene 15y ago
  And you're allowed to say that. In the mean time, I'd rather not have my students struggle with verbose syntax.
  • burgerbrain 15y ago
    At what academic level are these students? Every university^ I know of teaches incoming students in a language with C style syntax and they handle it just fine. ^Except those which use scheme...
    • cma 15y ago
      MIT uses python.
      • burgerbrain 15y ago
        Huh. Do you know when they switched from scheme? Northeastern I know still uses it, shame MIT stopped.
      • David 15y ago
        Carnegie Mellon's intro CS course has been in python for a couple of years, and we're switching to ruby for the coming year. Of course, that's followed by (Our own version of! =/ ) C, and then SML. Question for those who know more than I: what are the tradeoffs of first learning one language in depth, then branching out versus learning several languages(/styles) early on?
        • strlen 15y ago
          Using python for a completely introductory course for students that had no prior exposure to programming is one thing. However, it must almost _immediately_ be followed by C (and later by Lisp, ML/Haskell) rather than be used as primary language of instruction.
    • Leynos 15y ago
      University of Edinburgh uses Haskell. (Although it was C when I studies there).
    • xyzzyz 15y ago
      University of Warsaw lets students choose either Pascal or OCaml for introductory classes.