From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: *** X-Spam-Status: No, score=3.8 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID, RATWARE_MS_HASH,RATWARE_OUTLOOK_NONAME autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: fc89c,97188312486d4578 X-Google-Attributes: gidfc89c,public X-Google-Thread: 109fba,baaf5f793d03d420 X-Google-Attributes: gid109fba,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,97188312486d4578 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: 1014db,6154de2e240de72a X-Google-Attributes: gid1014db,public From: "Tim Behrendsen" Subject: Re: What's the best language to start with? [was: Re: Should I learn C or Pascal?] Date: 1996/08/06 Message-ID: <01bb8342$88cc6f40$32ee6fcf@timhome2>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 172356122 references: <01bb73e3.1c6a0060$6bf467ce@dave.iceslimited.com> <1996Jul20.124025.122789@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> <01bb7b06$311fabc0$87ee6fce@timpent.airshields.com> <31FBC584.4188@ivic.qc.ca> <01bb7da2$6c505ac0$96ee6fcf@timhome2> <01bb8027$de0e9c80$96ee6fcf@timhome2> <4u5a11$siv@mulga.cs.mu.OZ.AU> content-type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 organization: A-SIS mime-version: 1.0 newsgroups: comp.lang.c,comp.lang.c++,comp.unix.programmer,comp.lang.ada Date: 1996-08-06T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Fergus Henderson wrote in article <4u5a11$siv@mulga.cs.mu.OZ.AU>... > "Tim Behrendsen" writes: > > >Let's try a thought experiment. We take two students; Jane is taught > >assembly from day 1 for two years. John is taught C for two years. > >Both are exposed to identical curriculums of algorithmic analysis, > >data structures, etc. > > That's not a realistic thought experiment. Teaching abstraction, > data structures, etc. is easier in a higher level language, > and so it is unlikely that Jane will have managed to complete > the same curriculum that John can, given the handicap of using > a low-level language. This seems to be a common theme; that programming things in assembly in necessarily harder than programming in a HLL. Maybe I'm weird, but I just don't see assembly as being harder than a HLL, and in fact, it seems to me that it's much easier. The number of fundamental things to learn is *very* small, and I would think that being able to show a problem in terms of the "array of memory" being manipulated would just make it infinitely easier than having to wrestle with all the abstract nonsense. Now, you wouldn't want to *maintain* large systems of assembly, which is why HLLs have taken over the world, but it seems to me that assembly per se is just not that hard to use. -- Tim Behrendsen (tim@airshields.com)