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Australia

Good Language Choice For School Programming Test? 407

An anonymous reader writes "The Australian Informatics Olympiad programming test is being run in a couple of months. I'm an experienced programmer and I'm thinking of volunteering to tutor interested kids at my children's school to get them ready. There will be children of all levels in the group, from those that can't write 'hello world' in any language, to somewhat experienced programmers. For those starting from scratch, I'm wondering what language to teach them to code in. Accepted languages are C, C++, Pascal, Java, PHP, Python and Visual Basic. I'm leaning towards Python, because it is a powerful language with a simple syntax. However, the test has a run-time CPU seconds limit, so using an interpreted language like Python could put the students at a disadvantage compared to using C. Is it better to teach them something in 2 months that they're likely to be able to code in but possibly run foul of the CPU time limit, or struggle to teach them to code in a more complicated syntax like C/C++ which would however give them the best chance of having a fast solution?"

Comment Re:Poor guy... (Score 3, Interesting) 514

I am Chinese and I think you really understand what is happening here. But it's really hard to find a way out. If we have more protection of employees, higher salaries, less working hours, it will definitely make massive unemployment. The point is, if we do think all people are born EQUAL, we should accept that, some one work harder and require less will get the job, the ones who works less but earn much more salary will lost his job, even if they are your fellow citizens.

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