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Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Fun with C Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2011 08:23:45 -0700 (PDT) Organization: http://groups.google.com Message-ID: <0eba8ffa-6d67-4957-8be3-8fbc3c2ea903@u38g2000prd.googlegroups.com> References: <27cf3992-4132-4483-9110-adc7a089cd4a@e8g2000vbz.googlegroups.com> <3ccf18a2-ba10-42bc-aeab-9368749961fb@a11g2000pro.googlegroups.com> <4c2b6a58-e3b6-47da-95e0-64853be5c1f9@v11g2000prb.googlegroups.com> <86748003-860f-4729-ae26-55be1e58ac2b@d27g2000vbz.googlegroups.com> <4b5748dc-60fa-4cec-a317-054626e9a1ca@d19g2000prh.googlegroups.com> <1908th3tyz101.1f6c5w8t9mggy.dlg@40tude.net> <2118e788-7b3e-4d25-8d0f-5e60498e3a3b@cu4g2000vbb.googlegroups.com> <1hnl95prvrt6i$.1s675gncbjxsu$.dlg@40tude.net> <5d44db50-ceff-4f4d-8bc7-714f31fbca06@hd10g2000vbb.googlegroups.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 108.3.157.162 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: posting.google.com 1303572226 20126 127.0.0.1 (23 Apr 2011 15:23:46 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2011 15:23:46 +0000 (UTC) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: u38g2000prd.googlegroups.com; posting-host=108.3.157.162; posting-account=VnNb3AoAAACTpRtCcTrcjmPX7cs92k1Q User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.1; Trident/4.0; GTB6.6; SLCC2; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30729; Media Center PC 6.0; InfoPath.3; Tablet PC 2.0; .NET4.0C; .NET4.0E; BRI/1; BRI/2),gzip(gfe) Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:19014 Date: 2011-04-23T08:23:45-07:00 List-Id: On Apr 22, 10:08=A0pm, Elias Salom=E3o Helou Neto wrote: > On Apr 22, 6:21=A0am, "Dmitry A. Kazakov" > wrote: > > > I think that all significant paradigms are already stated. All language= s we > > are talking about are equivalent in terms of Turing completeness. Parad= igms > > are of course finer than that, but still I believe that there is nothin= g > > significantly new left. All these agent-, aspect-, cloud-, extreme-, > > whatever stuff was known and used before 1980. > > I must mention that it is always like that, people tend to believe > that every paradigm is already around until someone comes up with a > "new" one. But it may pretty well be the case that you're right and > they're all already stated, I guess there is just no way to know. > > > Not every man or woman can program. I doubt that programming should be > > taught to people specializing on other majors. Sorry guys, programming = is > > not a modern lingua franca. > > Surely you're right. But still I have to teach my students... > > > Nevertheless, future professional programmers should never be exposed t= o C > > as the first language. It is like teaching physics in the school. Pupil= s > > first learn the physics of XIX century. When they made 3/4, they are to= ld: > > guys, that was wrong! Here is how it goes! Programmers must learn conce= pts > > and techniques which C cannot illustrate. What C can illustrate is how = not > > to program. > > When it comes to physics, the main reason to teach classical > mechanical is that it is actually a good approximation to modern > theories and the math is far more simple. Nobody will say "guys, that > was wrong!" because that is not wrong, it just must be used within its > valid limits. Rockets reached the moon based on computations that used > classical Newtonian mechanics. > > It is quite different with programming languages, as C is actually > harder than Pascal, which is a great tool for teaching programming. > > Only for the record, my current students are not supposed to become > professional programmers, but physicists. Not that it actually > matters, since those who should become professionals are exposed to C > as a first programming language as well in here. > > > C is poor for teaching because it takes too much noise to illustrate ba= sic > > programming concepts like array, string, result of a function etc. It i= s > > full of silly limitations, which programmers must learn to circumvent, > > before they get at the core ideas. In the end they learn only these tri= cks > > and think that programming is about that, lacking understanding of soft= ware > > engineering as a whole. > > C is terrible for teaching, but it is not up to me to decide which > language to teach in those introductory classes. > > Elias. Just out of curiosity, why physicists should learn C? Isn't FORTRAN much better choice for them?