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=0.2 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID, REPLYTO_WITHOUT_TO_CC 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: 103376,97188312486d4578 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: 109fba,baaf5f793d03d420 X-Google-Attributes: gid109fba,public X-Google-Thread: 1014db,6154de2e240de72a X-Google-Attributes: gid1014db,public X-Google-Thread: 10db24,4cf070091283b555 X-Google-Attributes: gid10db24,public From: patrick@broadvision.com (Patrick Horgan) Subject: Re: What's the best language to learn? [was Re: Should I learn C or Pascal?] Date: 1996/08/26 Message-ID: <4vqt9t$3jk@ns.broadvision.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 176545383 references: organization: The quite unorganized Patrick reply-to: patrick@broadvision.com newsgroups: comp.edu,comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.c++,comp.unix.programmer Date: 1996-08-26T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: In article , dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes: > Tim says > > "Because I've found that people tend to stick with the first > [dare I use the word] paradigm that they are introduced to. > Everything else they learn will be compared against the first > thing they learn" > > How true is this? Certainly true to some extent, and is of course > the fundamental reason why it is a huge mistake to teach assembly > to begin with. Maybe I'm an anomaly, but this isn't true for me at all. My first language was BASIC (the old kind with line-numbers;) my second 6502 assembler, and then I learned small C well enough to get it running on my machine so I could start learning C. This bizarre start exposed me to a lot of paradigms none of which predominate in how I approach a task now. Rather as the years go by I learn more and more paradigms, synethise combinations of them, make up others, and apply everything applicable to every problem across my desk. It was all important to my learning process and I've certainly come along way since my idea of good code was to leave spaces in the line numbers so I wouldn't have to renumber to insert lines. I certainly didn't imprint on any particular paradigm like I did on an editor. (No I'm not telling, we've got too many religious wars going on now;) -- Patrick J. Horgan patrick@broadvision.com Have horse will ride. Opinions mine, not my employer's except by most bizarre coincidence.