Re: Array Of Constant Strings?

[Dr Nancy's Sweetie <kilroy@elvis.rowan.edu>]

Georg Bauhaus <sb463ba@d2-hrz.uni-duisburg.de> asked, of the programming
contest I mentioned earlier:
> "The languages allowed for the 2003 contest are C, C++, Java,
> QuickBasic, and Visual Basic."
>
> How is that?

The contest is open to any high school in south Jersey whose team wins
at the county level.  In order to ensure fairness, we allow the students
to program using whatever language and environment they have been
learning in their classes.  The union of all the languages in use at all
the schools in half a state turns out to be pretty big.

One of the reasons I decided to go with Ada for my canonical sample
solution is that the language is reasonably readable to anyone who knows
much about programming.  (My solution isn't up on the site yet, so the
teachers can assign the problem for homework if they want.)

The schools teaching AP courses tend to use the language of the AP exam,
which is currently C++.  Next year, the AP test is going to switch from
C++ to Java, and many of the schools will be switching as well.

My own feelings are that C and C++ are not good languages for teaching a
first class in programming, and given what I saw of QuickBasic I'm
amazed that anyone uses it for anything.  But I don't get to make those
choices for other people.


Darren Provine ! kilroy@elvis.rowan.edu ! http://www.rowan.edu/~kilroy
"It is practically impossible to teach good programming style to students
 that have had prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are
 mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration."
           -- Edsger W. Dijkstra, SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 17, Number 5