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"It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilate

"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." --Edsger Dijkstra (1975)

ikari_pl 3y ago
I've dug deep into that quote and it wasn't even so much about the BASIC we know from the 8-bits. ;-) He also criticized every other major language at the time, except Pascal and (slowly emerging) C. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38743062 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38743062
- dventimi 3y ago
  I know. I think he was just taking the piss and I love it. And yet, there's more than a grain of truth in this quote and in other salty aphorisms from Dijkstra, especially: "The tools we use have a profound influence on our thinking habits, and, therefore, our thinking ability." I went from Basic to Pascal to C/C++ to Java to Python which bear more than a passing resemblance to one another. Am I habituated to overlook or discount other programming paradigms, like Lisp, Prolog, and Forth? I can tell you with certainty that I once was. My view was even more limited then than it is now, and yet at that time I thought I knew everything worth knowing.
zaphar 3y ago
And yet, I learned first on GW Basic and turned out to be a halfway decent programmer.
- dventimi 3y ago
  Compared to Dijkstra I'm quite certain that I'm a miserable programmer.
analog31 3y ago
As I commented in another thread, the idea of being permanently damaged by being taught the Wrong Thing is a misconception about learning. Yet most of us are where we're at by having survived many such things. I hope Dijkstra was being humorous. I used to wear his quote as a badge of honor.
- dventimi 3y ago
  I believe he was being humorous. Either way, I don't take it too seriously. After all, I also started programming with Basic.

ikari_pl 3y ago

I've dug deep into that quote and it wasn't even so much about the BASIC we know from the 8-bits. ;-) He also criticized every other major language at the time, except Pascal and (slowly emerging) C. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38743062 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38743062

dventimi 3y ago
I know. I think he was just taking the piss and I love it. And yet, there's more than a grain of truth in this quote and in other salty aphorisms from Dijkstra, especially: "The tools we use have a profound influence on our thinking habits, and, therefore, our thinking ability." I went from Basic to Pascal to C/C++ to Java to Python which bear more than a passing resemblance to one another. Am I habituated to overlook or discount other programming paradigms, like Lisp, Prolog, and Forth? I can tell you with certainty that I once was. My view was even more limited then than it is now, and yet at that time I thought I knew everything worth knowing.

zaphar 3y ago

And yet, I learned first on GW Basic and turned out to be a halfway decent programmer.

dventimi 3y ago
Compared to Dijkstra I'm quite certain that I'm a miserable programmer.

analog31 3y ago

As I commented in another thread, the idea of being permanently damaged by being taught the Wrong Thing is a misconception about learning. Yet most of us are where we're at by having survived many such things. I hope Dijkstra was being humorous. I used to wear his quote as a badge of honor.

dventimi 3y ago
I believe he was being humorous. Either way, I don't take it too seriously. After all, I also started programming with Basic.