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: 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: 1014db,6154de2e240de72a X-Google-Attributes: gid1014db,public From: rick.elbers@tip.nl (Rick Elbers) Subject: Re: What's the best language to start with? [was: Re: Should I learn C or Pascal?] Date: 1996/07/27 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 170485940 sender: news@tip.nl (The News User) x-nntp-posting-host: nijmegen02.pop.tip.nl references: <01bb73e3.1c6a0060$6bf467ce@dave.iceslimited.com> <1996Jul20.124025.122789@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> <01bb7b06$311fabc0$87ee6fce@timpent.airshields.com> organization: Enorm newsgroups: comp.lang.c,comp.lang.c++,comp.unix.programmer,comp.lang.ada Date: 1996-07-27T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: "Tim Behrendsen" wrote: >Mark Eissler wrote in article >... >> Yes, but since just about everyone else has said something I'd say follow >> this path BASIC -> Pascal -> C -> C++ -> JAVA. >I think that is fine for the casual programmer. If you want to be >a professional programmer, I think this is the *best* course, but >not the easiest ... >Assembly -> C [non-GUI] -> C-GUI -> C++ >All the rest of the languages are variations on the same theme. >Here's my rationale ... >Assembly: Learn what's *really* going on. The most important. I fully agree, i did not get the *concept*( i do not mean just the use) of pointers and reference down without an understanding of Assembly. I wonder how other C++ ers do this .... >C: Learn structured programming. C is close enough > to assembly that a student can really *see* how the > compiler translates the code to assembly, and really > understand what languages are all about. >C-GUI: Learn the concept of event-driven programming (which > is all GUI is, stripped of the extraneous stuff). >C++: Even though I think C++ is brain damaged, it is > close enough to C that the student can see what OOP > really is in the context of, again, assembly > language. Assembly is without the "abstraction > bias" that other languages have. IMO, the only > thing OOP brings to the table is the concept of > assigning methods to areas of memory, AKA objects. > Non-OOP: Apply methods to memory. OOP: Execute > method abstractly bound to memory. All the rest > of the concepts of OOP derive from that. Obviously, > I'm speaking from a "reality" point of view, not from > the OO abstraction. >My point is there is nothing that is all that complicated >in computer science, if it can be expressed in the fundamental >components of programming, which are move, arithmetic, logicals, >test, and branch (might be something else I'm leaving out). If >a student is ground in these fundamentals, there is nothing else >they can't learn. Yep this approach is IMHO the very best approach to understand almost every *over-mystified* topic (though later on you might just switch the other way around ..and considers "nothing compared......"). But when radically following this lead i think you can as well start with BASIC to get the hunch ( while all the concepts of branch,test,arithmic, move and logic are there also ...) rick >-- Tim Behrendsen (tim@airshields.com) Rick Elbers e-mail: rick.elbers@tip.nl