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=0.1 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_05,INVALID_MSGID 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: 10db24,4cf070091283b555 X-Google-Attributes: gid10db24,public X-Google-Thread: 1014db,6154de2e240de72a X-Google-Attributes: gid1014db,public From: gegressy@uoguelph.ca (Gabor Egressy) Subject: Re: What's the best language to learn? [was Re: Should I learn C or Pascal?] Date: 1996/08/14 Message-ID: <4ut8h3$2an@ccshst05.uoguelph.ca>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 174285003 references: <4u7hi6$s2b@nntp.seflin.lib.fl.us> <4uo74j$95p@ns.broadvision.com> <01bb8950$2c8dcc60$87ee6fce@timpent.airshields.com> followup-to: comp.edu,comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.c++,comp.unix.programmer organization: University of Guelph newsgroups: comp.edu,comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.c++,comp.unix.programmer Date: 1996-08-14T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Tim Behrendsen (tim@airshields.com) wrote: [snip] : Now, what if they had started ol' Darin off with some very : simple concepts in assembly, really showed him the procedural Why oh why would you want to start with assembly? Assembly is great for writing viruses and small code that needs to be fast but is a pain to write and maintain. How is assembly going to teach you about "the procedural nature of computers, data flow, data transformation"? Assmebly is OK after you have some programming in a high level language under your belt. If you really want to go back in time why don't you suggest machine code. After all all you need to know are 1's and 0's. Can't get simpler than that. : nature of the computer, data flow, data transformations, etc., : and *then* moved on to algorithms such as Quicksort. You Qicksort isn't that hard to understand. Just grab a deck of cards and plow through it. A deck of cards works for all the sorts I know and care to know. : just plain can't fail to understand what's going on! -- Gabor Egressy gegressy@uoguelph.ca Guelph, Ontario gabor@snowhite.cis.uoguelph.ca Canada