Re: Beginner's Language?

[markv@peewee.telescopemaking.org (Mark VandeWettering)]

On 9 May 2001 18:24:26 GMT, Andreas Krennmair <a.krennmair@aon.at> wrote:

>The problem is that Lisp is in no way similar to a natural language. 

I find this statement curious.  Are there programming languages which are
similar to natural languages?  If there are, what benefits are there from
using those languages?

>And 
>natural language can be understood easier than some functional, theoretical
>stuff with a unique concept like Lisp. 

I've heard this argument about "natural languages" used with regards to 
perl before.  I am always confused by it.  Don't get me wrong, perl is 
an incredibly useful tool, and I give Larry Wall all the credit in the 
universe for making such a great tool and giving it to the world, but
I am constantly confused by justification.  First of all, precisely what
feature of perl is similar to natural languages?  Second of all, why
do we think that natural languages are good?  Natural languages are 
notoriously hard to learn, full of exceptions, and often vague.  Last,
what makes you think that processes are best described in terms of 
natural languages?  Mathematics implements entire languages specialized
to their domain just so that they can express the ideas they have clearly
and concisely.

>Don't get me wrong, Lisp is a great
>language, and I personally find it quite exciting as four year Pascal and
>two year C/C++ programmer, but it's hardly usable for teaching, because it
>is so unique (well, you _could_ to functional programming in C, but it would
>be considered bad style).

The reason that Scheme (I'll keep pretending you were talking about Scheme)
is good is precisely becaue it DOES leverage new ideas and gets students
to think about computation not in the natural way that they think about it, 
but in the formalized way that computers do. 

>Lisp has hardly anything in common with natural
>languages. Or could you express "My girlfriend's name is Suzy and her age
>is 17" as readable as this in Lisp:
>$girlfriend{'name'} = "Suzy";
>$girlfriend{'age'} = 17;

(set! girlfriend '((name . "Suzy") (age . 17)))

Is that so different?  Are association lists really harder than associative
arrays?

>Of course, this is not the best example, since Perl has a syntax that is
>not the optimum for beginners.

In fact, it is very unoptimal for beginners.  

>>  A beginner is not biased in any way and so it doe not matter what
>>  he/she started from. If he starts with Lisp; C, Java looks messy. If

>It _does_ matter. Beginners can easily get frustrated because of the
>sometimes confusing syntax. 

I'm not sure how you can present a program fragment in perl, and then 
in the same post claim that LISP has a confusing syntax.  

>BTW, I wouldn't recommend starting with Java
>or C/C++, either. 

Neither would I, unless you want them never to program again.

>I'd recommend and teach (if I were a teacher :) some
>Wirth language, because they're designed especially for teaching basics
>of programming.

You could do worse than Pascal/Modula/Oberon, but in most respects I
think Scheme is better for beginning programmers.

>Best regards,
>Andreas Krennmair
>-- 
>void strncpy(char *p, char *q, int n){while(n--){*p++=*q++;}} 


-- 
/* __  __ __   ____      __*/float m,a,r,k,v;main(i){for(;r<4;r+=.1){for(a=0;
/*|  \/  |\ \ / /\ \    / /*/a<4;a+=.06){k=v=0;for(i=99;--i&&k*k+v*v<4;)m=k*k
/*| |\/| | \ V /  \ \/\/ / */-v*v+a-2,v=2*k*v+r-2,k=m;putchar("X =."[i&3]);}
/*|_|  |_ark\_/ande\_/\_/ettering <markv@telescopemaking.org> */puts("");}}