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=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 109fba,baaf5f793d03d420 X-Google-Attributes: gid109fba,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,97188312486d4578 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: fc89c,97188312486d4578 X-Google-Attributes: gidfc89c,public X-Google-Thread: 1014db,6154de2e240de72a X-Google-Attributes: gid1014db,public From: fjh@mundook.cs.mu.OZ.AU (Fergus Henderson) Subject: Re: What's the best language to start with? [was: Re: Should I learn C or Pascal?] Date: 1996/08/07 Message-ID: <4uaqqg$203@mulga.cs.mu.OZ.AU>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 172752980 references: organization: Comp Sci, University of Melbourne newsgroups: comp.lang.c,comp.lang.c++,comp.unix.programmer,comp.lang.ada Date: 1996-08-07T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: "Tim Behrendsen" writes: >Fergus Henderson wrote in article >> N lines of assembler is not much more difficult to understand >> or to code than N lines of C. But if you want the students to >> understand say quicksort, it's a lot easier showing them 20 lines >> of C than 100 lines of assembler. > >Who's talking about showing them? I would suggest that if >they wrote a quicksort in assembler, they will have a much >better "feel" for the algorithm, than if they wrote it in C. So which is better use of a student's time, writing 100 lines of quicksort in assembler, or using C and writing 20 lines of quicksort, 10 lines of insertion sort, 20 lines of heap sort, 20 lines of merge sort, and 30 lines of glue to test them all out? Which will give them more practice in choosing meaningful variable names? Which will give them understanding of a range of different sorting algorithms? Which will give them experience of the idea of having multiple implementations of the same interface? Which will teach them how to write portable code? Which will give them more experience with the sort of software engineering problems they are likely to encounter in the Real World [tm]? -- Fergus Henderson | "I have always known that the pursuit WWW: | of excellence is a lethal habit" PGP: finger fjh@128.250.37.3 | -- the last words of T. S. Garp.