Re: From extended Pascals to Ada 95 guide

[Marco van de Voort <marcov@stack.nl>]

Stefan Skoglund wrote:
> 
> John English wrote:
> >
> > Marco van de Voort wrote:
> > > I was yesterday totally flabbergasted when I heard that the Math+IT faculty
> > > will teach the next generation programming with Java as introductionary
> > > course!
> >
> > Expect some interesting times... examples might include (from a 2nd
> > year group I taught, having taught Ada as a first language in their
> > 1st year):
> 
> note also that you need to imprint real early on a small taste
> of OOP.

Why?

> Understanding a bit about objects is necessary if you want
> something like Hello World.

No, you can make a perfectly good "Hello World" without objects.
 
> Early on it is good if the student can try ideas (even stupid ones) and
> get immediate results ie like a language like ML or LISP.

Again, why?

> The student shouldn't need to handle such technicalities like files
> or units and so on.

A file is an important generic concept used by most languages (including
OOP ones).  The same for units, or modules.

Why do you get the idea that they are useless technicalities?

-- 

Marco van de Voort (Marcov@stack.nl or marco@freepascal.org)