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I find, that when talking to beginners, it's more common for the beginner to already be heading off in a direction that will ultimately frustrate their attempts
by todd8 12y ago
I find, that when talking to beginners, it's more common for the beginner to already be heading off in a direction that will ultimately frustrate their attempts to learn. Usually, this is due to their desire to skip right over the whole beginners phase of learning to program. It's as if they say, well I going to skip Driver's Ed and start with driving a Formula 1 car because it's a faster car.
One friend said to me "Well, Python feels like such a grab bag of features, it's too perplexing. I'm just going to start with C++ instead."
A Ph.D. student in Mechanical engineering was going to start developing a simulation for his dissertation and was going to use C++. He had very little programming background.
A friends bright 13 year old wanted to learn programming and told me that he wanted to learn C++ because it was fast.
- bbcbasic 12y agoRegarding the 13 year old when I was young I learned BBC Basic. If I had to try and learn Assembler or C++ at 8 I would have been put off programming for a few decades! I could learn basic by copying and modifying listings in magazines.
- ssully 12y agoTo add a contrasting opinion I started off with C++ because I heard that's what games were written in and I wanted to learn games. I picked up C++ Primer in Junior year of high school, got some text printing to command line and was fucking ecstatic. I eventually got stuck and had no one to really give me guidance, but it did make me decide to pursue a degree in Computer Science instead of English. Despite loving to write at the time, the brief exposure to programming made to so damn curious that I felt completed to break out of my comfort for writing and try something different.