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> it's nice to avoid burdening beginners with extra syntax when they're already struggling to learn other things As someone that teaches college students to pr
by bachmeier 5y ago
> it's nice to avoid burdening beginners with extra syntax when they're already struggling to learn other things
As someone that teaches college students to program (not in a CS department) that statement is correct but doesn't provide the full picture. It's good to get rid of the extra syntax if and only if you don't need it - and that means you're intentionally limiting what you're teaching them.
- extra88 5y ago> you're intentionally limiting what you're teaching them Yes, that’s the point. It’s an introductory class, choices have to be made about what to teach when.
- bachmeier 5y agoWell, of course, but the point is that avoiding syntax is not a great criterion for defining the fundamentals of programming. A couple orders of magnitude more important is to decide what concepts are useful for beginning programmers to know.
- afiori 5y agoI took it as "removing syntax left more space for other stuff"