Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment Concepts come first (Score 3, Insightful) 1100

I'm a programming teacher. I've found that the first language that students learn steers their mind in learning coming languages. If they learn perl first and then java, they tend to try to write java programs as if it was perl. If they learn java and then perl, they try to write perl as if was java.

This is important, because a language that forces you to think in a sane way from the beginning will make you write better code in the future, regardless of which language you then use.

My first recommendation for choosing a beginner language is thus: whatever you do, don't choose a language with sloppy type checking and/or sloppy syntax. Force the students to learn that explicit variable declarations, explicit type casts and explicit data structures are good things.

A large perl application structured in an object-oriented fashion, containing explicit variable declarations and care taken to type casts will be a lot easier to maintain than the same application without these features, eventhough the conceptual functionality can be the same. I would thus prefer a student who learned java as a first language to write that perl application in front of a student who learned perl as a first language.

The conclusion of this is that languages like perl, python, C and visual basic are poor choices for first languages. Languages like java, pascal and delphi are good choices for first languages (eventhough the latter two are a bit dated in regards to object-orientation).

Slashdot Top Deals

"Aww, if you make me cry anymore, you'll fog up my helmet." -- "Visionaries" cartoon

Working...