4 ms·

It helps a lot to be exposed to a variety of approaches, exactly as you say, and to be exposed early while you're still forming ideas about how things work. Si

by jsankey 12y ago

It helps a lot to be exposed to a variety of approaches, exactly as you say, and to be exposed early while you're still forming ideas about how things work. Simply saying C is the "best" way also misses that point that different people are motivated to learn in different ways. For many, ramping up quickly in Python and plugging something into a Twitter library would show them that they can actually do something interesting right now, which is enough to keep them coming back for more. Others are driven by understanding how things work, and would be happy to crack open a core dump to figure out what happened.

tptacek 12y ago
I agree that C is not the "best"; just, vital (I buy that Rust might supplant it.) But there's nothing you engage with in Python that you can't get by learning C, or Lisp. Like I said: Python is just a bad example.
- jsankey 12y ago
  I should have been more clear: I agree with you on this and think C should be one of the batch of first languages students are exposed to (as the best choice in its class at the moment). The OP seems far too biased towards C, though. What worked for me was early exposure each of: a specific teaching language (somewhat like Eiffel, within a simplified environment), C/C++ and Scheme. They each taught me very different things and I'm glad they were all offered in my undergrad, although I think they should offer Scheme earlier (IIRC it was part of an optional third year course, which also touched on e.g. Prolog).
- _dps 12y ago
  At the risk of being perceived to move the goalposts, I think there is a real lesson to engage with: empirically, for large classes of programmers, syntax, uniformity, and absence of boilerplate actually make a larger difference in out-the-gate productivity than many would like to admit. I understand that this isn't a lesson about programming per se, but I think it's a lesson about the practice of programming. I see this repeatedly in our internship program, where people often ask after we "promote" them to other language work "Why can't XYZ look as clean and simple as Python?". I do think that's a lesson worth learning, and it's a little hard to learn except by osmosis. If I just tell someone "empirically, syntax matters a lot more than you might think in doing real work" it's easy to dismiss as understood-but-not-important. Jonathan Blow has a bit in one of his videos about "understanding" vs "really viscerally understanding", and I think this is one area where the latter simply can't be achieved without direct experience.
  - tptacek 12y ago
    Productivity, yes! Understanding, no.

by jsankey 12y ago

tptacek 12y ago

I agree that C is not the "best"; just, vital (I buy that Rust might supplant it.) But there's nothing you engage with in Python that you can't get by learning C, or Lisp. Like I said: Python is just a bad example.

jsankey 12y ago
I should have been more clear: I agree with you on this and think C should be one of the batch of first languages students are exposed to (as the best choice in its class at the moment). The OP seems far too biased towards C, though. What worked for me was early exposure each of: a specific teaching language (somewhat like Eiffel, within a simplified environment), C/C++ and Scheme. They each taught me very different things and I'm glad they were all offered in my undergrad, although I think they should offer Scheme earlier (IIRC it was part of an optional third year course, which also touched on e.g. Prolog).
_dps 12y ago
At the risk of being perceived to move the goalposts, I think there is a real lesson to engage with: empirically, for large classes of programmers, syntax, uniformity, and absence of boilerplate actually make a larger difference in out-the-gate productivity than many would like to admit. I understand that this isn't a lesson about programming per se, but I think it's a lesson about the practice of programming. I see this repeatedly in our internship program, where people often ask after we "promote" them to other language work "Why can't XYZ look as clean and simple as Python?". I do think that's a lesson worth learning, and it's a little hard to learn except by osmosis. If I just tell someone "empirically, syntax matters a lot more than you might think in doing real work" it's easy to dismiss as understood-but-not-important. Jonathan Blow has a bit in one of his videos about "understanding" vs "really viscerally understanding", and I think this is one area where the latter simply can't be achieved without direct experience.
- tptacek 12y ago
  Productivity, yes! Understanding, no.