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In my experience, the gulf between not understanding programming and any beginner language - say, Scratch - is much wider than the gap between any two languages
by dsr_ 4y ago
In my experience, the gulf between not understanding programming and any beginner language - say, Scratch - is much wider than the gap between any two languages in the same family.
Java is a terrible language to teach early programming: the features chosen to get to OOP get in the way of understanding basic control. Perl is better. Python is miles better. A dialect of Python with more explicit blocking instead of whitespace sensitivity would be excellent.
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As for constructing a toy system with the plan to throw it away after you've learned from it -- isn't that what an MVP is?
- chriswarbo 4y ago> Java is a terrible language to teach early programming: the features chosen to get to OOP get in the way of understanding basic control... Python is miles better. Absolutely. I managed to teach myself enough basic, procedural Python to make CLI games. I later took some courses in Java, and really struggled to grasp the OOP concepts that are pretty crucial there. I managed to figure it out by translating examples into Python, and learning how Python's OOP works; once I understood the ideas, it became straightforward to apply them in Java.
- sam-s 4y ago> A dialect of Python with more explicit blocking instead of whitespace sensitivity would be excellent. It's called Scheme ;-)