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My intro programming course (in high school) was in C++, and I think it would've scared me off programming entirely if I hadn't picked up mIRC-script (a very di

by mjn 14y ago

My intro programming course (in high school) was in C++, and I think it would've scared me off programming entirely if I hadn't picked up mIRC-script (a very different language) on my own as a hobby. There is so much accidental complexity in C++ that it's a pretty terrible introductory language. We literally spent several weeks of the semester on how to get input and output to work properly through the giant mess that is iostreams. At the introductory level, I think the biggest issue is teaching "computational thinking" [1] or "procedural literacy" [2]: getting people thinking about the idea that you're writing specifications for a machine to carry out computations. From that perspective, it's best to pick a language that lets you get to algorithmic logic as quickly as possible. [1] http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/usr/wing/www/publications/Wing06.pdf http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/usr/wing/www/publications/Wing0... [2] http://dm.lcc.gatech.edu/~mateas/publications/MateasOTH2005.pdf http://dm.lcc.gatech.edu/~mateas/publications/MateasOTH2005....

chadcf 14y ago
Me too (well, ok, my first programming class was in Fortran taught by a 85 year old man who spent most of the time telling us about how much harder it was back when you had to use fortran). I hated C++. I still think it's a fairly terrible language. But, for fun I took the Harvard CS50 course to refresh my knowledge of C and I found that WAY better than my C++ course. I think C is brilliant for introducing programming because it's very very simple, yet also very very difficult. There's not much to learn, except a lot of concepts (memory usage, data structures, etc). I also think Objective-C is a really great language though, so I might be crazy. But, you give me a choice between C++ and a language that is basically C with a few additional keywords and garbage collection, and I find that an easy choice...
- kyllo 14y ago
  C++ is terrifying, and teaching an introductory programming course in C++ is an awful idea. Using plain C would make much more sense. C is also a better choice than Java because Java doesn't force you to learn about pointers, or memory in general, really. Countless Java bugs are introduced by programmers who don't understand what operations give you a copy of something, and which ones give you a reference to something (especially if that something is mutable). I also think Objective-C is pretty good though, especially with the addition of ARC. It's like a better C, with Smalltalk-style objects and a lot more (mutable and immutable) datatype options. Much saner and less painful than C++, but more challenging than Java.
  - argv_empty 14y ago
    Java doesn't force you to learn about pointers, or memory in general, really. Countless Java bugs are introduced by programmers who don't understand what operations give you a copy of something, and which ones give you a reference to something These two statements seem to be at odds with each other.
- LinaLauneBaer 14y ago
  The Objective-C garbage collection is deprecated.

by mjn 14y ago

chadcf 14y ago

Me too (well, ok, my first programming class was in Fortran taught by a 85 year old man who spent most of the time telling us about how much harder it was back when you had to use fortran). I hated C++. I still think it's a fairly terrible language. But, for fun I took the Harvard CS50 course to refresh my knowledge of C and I found that WAY better than my C++ course. I think C is brilliant for introducing programming because it's very very simple, yet also very very difficult. There's not much to learn, except a lot of concepts (memory usage, data structures, etc). I also think Objective-C is a really great language though, so I might be crazy. But, you give me a choice between C++ and a language that is basically C with a few additional keywords and garbage collection, and I find that an easy choice...

kyllo 14y ago
C++ is terrifying, and teaching an introductory programming course in C++ is an awful idea. Using plain C would make much more sense. C is also a better choice than Java because Java doesn't force you to learn about pointers, or memory in general, really. Countless Java bugs are introduced by programmers who don't understand what operations give you a copy of something, and which ones give you a reference to something (especially if that something is mutable). I also think Objective-C is pretty good though, especially with the addition of ARC. It's like a better C, with Smalltalk-style objects and a lot more (mutable and immutable) datatype options. Much saner and less painful than C++, but more challenging than Java.
- argv_empty 14y ago
  Java doesn't force you to learn about pointers, or memory in general, really. Countless Java bugs are introduced by programmers who don't understand what operations give you a copy of something, and which ones give you a reference to something These two statements seem to be at odds with each other.
LinaLauneBaer 14y ago
The Objective-C garbage collection is deprecated.