3 ms·
Dijkstra in https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/ewd498.html https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/ewd498.htm... has various quotes tha
by btilly 5y ago
Dijkstra in https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/ewd498.html https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/ewd498.htm... has various quotes that apply here.
The most applicable is, "It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration."
But do not forget, "The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offence."
- jefftk 5y agoOn the other hand my team recent was taking about what languages we started with, and about 1/4 of us started with Basic. Seemed to recover ok!
- nesarkvechnep 5y agoThat’s your own opinion.
- jefftk 5y agoI'm not claiming Basic is the best language, or that it doesn't matter what language you start with, but "practically impossible" is clearly way off.
- alanbernstein 5y agoI think you need to know how many students were introduced to programming with a course in Basic, and gave up programming, to make that claim. Not that I necessarily agree with the quote.
- peoplefromibiza 5y agoI've started with BASIC as well, in the 80s, on a C64 Dijkstra was right: I've wasted a lot of time unlearning BASIC to re-learn, if I wasn't exposed to BASIC at all I could have learnt from scratch a proper modern programming language/paradigm
- mypalmike 5y agoIt helps to have a good teacher. My years of Atari 8 bit BASIC seemed more help than hindrance when a good high school computer teacher then taught me Pascal.