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I disagree : you can easily teach high level concepts like control flow, branching, loops, logical operations, if/then, without even using pointers. You can eve
by plg 13y ago
I disagree : you can easily teach high level concepts like control flow, branching, loops, logical operations, if/then, without even using pointers. You can even do some pretty high level numerical algorithm stuff just using plain old stack variables.
- mahyarm 13y agoThis is the first exposure to programming & computation class, anything superfluous such as semicolons or the keywords just trips people up and gets in the way of learning. You have to tell people to ignore all of the extra magic words just to get started, even though they would really like to know what it all means. Look at Java: public class HelloWorld { public static void main(String[] args) { System.out.println("Hello, World"); } } C: #import <stdio.h> int main() { printf("hello"); return 0; } Python: print "Hello"
- njbooher 13y ago#import <stdio.h> -> #include <stdio.h>
- betterunix 13y agoReading inputs without using pointers is pretty complicated in C...
- zvrba 13y agoIn C, you can't even get user input without using pointers. Command-line argument? argv is a pointer. fgets/fscanf into a variable? You have to use a pointer. Yes, you can tell the students to treat those stars and ampersands as necessary magic that they don't need to understand right now, but you're still using pointers.