Re: Beginner's Language?

[brlewis@my-deja.com]

Robert Posey <muddy@raytheon.com> writes:

> I pick Java as the first language, it makes C++ easier to learn, it
> has fewer nasty surprises,

You mean than C++?

> and integrates with the web well, so that
> fun projects are possible.

Why should an introductory programming course involve knowing about
structured documents?  Shouldn't the focus be on the structure of
programs instead?

In Scheme, the actual *programming* is fun; no need to wrap a pretty web
page around it.  After the beginning programming course is over, those
who want to do web work have good tools to choose from, e.g. SSAX if
they want to write programs that manipulate structured documents, BRL if
they just want to stick server-side program code inside a web page.  To
see some fun, quick web hacks with source visit

	http://www.webappcabaret.com/brl/p/brlewis/index.brl

> In addition, it is important in the modern
> University Environment to allow work to be done on either Windoze,
> Linux, Mac and Unix environments and Java does that without forcing
> the Graders to maintain different systems.

What release of Java is the Mac up to now?  How about BSD?  Do you have
all the platforms stick with the least common denominator?  This version
skew is why a lot of languages now boast of being "more portable than
Java."

> Java IDE vendors IBM and
> Sun also provide relatively easy to use and free IDE's.

Do they work with the least-common-denominator Java, or do you need a
recent version?

I notice that the latest version of the DrScheme IDE is available for
all the platforms you mentioned.  I've tried it on NT and Linux; it
works the same on those platforms, and presumably on Mac as well.

> LISP is a great language, but its so different it is nightmarish at
> first to people with some programing experience

Not everyone finds it nightmarish to learn something new and different.
The two coworkers I've been teaching Scheme to have found it
interesting.

> I also would never want a student to be able to
> ignore what type of number they are using, its very bad practice in
> most cases.

You mean like writing x/y in Java without paying attention to whether x
and y are floats or ints?  How do you keep a student from doing that?

-- 
Bruce R. Lewis				http://brl.sourceforge.net/