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digitalmars.D.announce - Best language for beginners

reply "Charles" <noone nowhere.com> writes:
I never read slashdot , but this showed up on my google news page

http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/11/1951203

D is mentioned as a candidate about the third post down.
Aug 14 2005
parent reply Hasan Aljudy <hasan.aljudy gmail.com> writes:
Charles wrote:

 I never read slashdot , but this showed up on my google news page
 
 http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/11/1951203
 
 D is mentioned as a candidate about the third post down.
 
 
 
 


The spec says D is not so good for people who are just starting out in 
programming.

I would personally go for Java, but the problem is you're gonna have to 
mention "class" before the students ever had a chance to know about 
programming.

C is not bad, except the printf formatting thing isn't so beginner-friendly.

BASIC (the old basic, not visual basic) wouldn't be a bad choice either. 
I learned it when I was like 8 years old (I had was an MSX computer). I 
wouldn't spend too much time on it .. just use it to introduce loops and 
functions with it, which by the way was all I learned from it.

I'd personally start with C++, the cout << way of printing is clean and 
obvious, but I wouldn't use C++ to teach OOP. Once we get past pointers 
and structs, I'd move to Java.

As for pascal .. well, I have a thing against it.
It's all good and simple and all .. but once the code exceeds 50 lines, 
it becomes very hard to debug and maintain it. Everything is so 
cluttered .. there's simply no obvious boundaries between functions, and 
main becomes hard to find without a comment.
I always put a huge comment on it to help me find it
(*
  *
  * MAIN
  *
  *)
Aug 14 2005
next sibling parent reply "Jarrett Billingsley" <kb3ctd2 yahoo.com> writes:
"Hasan Aljudy" <hasan.aljudy gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:ddoipa$2mag$1 digitaldaemon.com...

 C is not bad, except the printf formatting thing isn't so 
 beginner-friendly.


The console IO functions of C are awful at best, and it's more than a little 
pain to have to deal with strings in C, which, considering that you usually 
deal entirely with the console in beginner programming, is not a good thing.


 BASIC (the old basic, not visual basic) wouldn't be a bad choice either. I 
 learned it when I was like 8 years old (I had was an MSX computer). I 
 wouldn't spend too much time on it .. just use it to introduce loops and 
 functions with it, which by the way was all I learned from it.


Ooh.  Line numbers are the devil.  Might want to use a more up-to-date BASIC 
language, like PureBasic or something.  Anything to get away from the awful 
spaghetti code that the old line numbers forced.


 I'd personally start with C++, the cout << way of printing is clean and 
 obvious, but I wouldn't use C++ to teach OOP. Once we get past pointers 
 and structs, I'd move to Java.


Good idea.  C++ at least has decent and nice-looking IO, and okay strings.


 As for pascal .. well, I have a thing against it.
 It's all good and simple and all .. but once the code exceeds 50 lines, it 
 becomes very hard to debug and maintain it. Everything is so cluttered .. 
 there's simply no obvious boundaries between functions, and main becomes 
 hard to find without a comment.


Yeah, I always got that feeling when reading Pascal/Delphi code too.  It's 
also irritating to have to declare all the variables at the top of the 
function and not inline with the code, like C++/D allow.
Aug 14 2005
parent reply Hasan Aljudy <hasan.aljudy gmail.com> writes:
Jarrett Billingsley wrote:

 "Hasan Aljudy" <hasan.aljudy gmail.com> wrote in message 
 news:ddoipa$2mag$1 digitaldaemon.com...


<snip>

BASIC (the old basic, not visual basic) wouldn't be a bad choice either. I 
learned it when I was like 8 years old (I had was an MSX computer). I 
wouldn't spend too much time on it .. just use it to introduce loops and 
functions with it, which by the way was all I learned from it.


 
 
 Ooh.  Line numbers are the devil.  Might want to use a more up-to-date BASIC 
 language, like PureBasic or something.  Anything to get away from the awful 
 spaghetti code that the old line numbers forced.
 


hmm, tbh I don't remember anything from basic, but I do remember that 
when I started learning functions in C++, I immdeiatly related it to the 
concept of GOSUB.
Aug 14 2005
parent "Jarrett Billingsley" <kb3ctd2 yahoo.com> writes:
"Hasan Aljudy" <hasan.aljudy gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:ddolsb$2o6c$1 digitaldaemon.com...

 hmm, tbh I don't remember anything from basic, but I do remember that when 
 I started learning functions in C++, I immdeiatly related it to the 
 concept of GOSUB.


Good point, I forgot about GOSUB.  However, what really makes most old-style 
BASIC code look like spaghetti is the lack of any kind of looping structure 
besides FOR loops.  Any other kind of loop was accomplished with something 
like "IF X<10 THEN 40".
Aug 14 2005
prev sibling next sibling parent Dejan Lekic <leka entropy.tmok.com> writes:
I would also use C++ because I think high-level languages that hide many
things from developer, like direct memory access for example, create huge
gap in understanding of lower-level programming, and how all those
nice&usefull classes & packages work behind the scenes.
C++ gives oportunity to "widen the horizon", and I think D is the same
story. - I would definitely recommend D also as a programming language for
beginners, yes.

-- 
...........
Dejan Lekic
  http://dejan.lekic.org
Aug 14 2005
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Vathix <chris dprogramming.com> writes:
 The spec says D is not so good for people who are just starting out in  
 programming.


I believe that is just because there aren't many tutorials or books on D  
yet.
Aug 14 2005
parent J C Calvarese <technocrat7 gmail.com> writes:
In article <op.sviv00vql2lsvj esi>, Vathix says...

 The spec says D is not so good for people who are just starting out in  
 programming.


I believe that is just because there aren't many tutorials or books on D  
yet.


That's my feeling as well.

jcc7
Aug 14 2005
prev sibling next sibling parent reply "Ben Hinkle" <ben.hinkle gmail.com> writes:
"Hasan Aljudy" <hasan.aljudy gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:ddoipa$2mag$1 digitaldaemon.com...

 Charles wrote:

 I never read slashdot , but this showed up on my google news page

 http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/11/1951203

 D is mentioned as a candidate about the third post down.


 The spec says D is not so good for people who are just starting out in 
 programming.

 I would personally go for Java, but the problem is you're gonna have to 
 mention "class" before the students ever had a chance to know about 
 programming.

 C is not bad, except the printf formatting thing isn't so 
 beginner-friendly.

 BASIC (the old basic, not visual basic) wouldn't be a bad choice either. I 
 learned it when I was like 8 years old (I had was an MSX computer). I 
 wouldn't spend too much time on it .. just use it to introduce loops and 
 functions with it, which by the way was all I learned from it.

 I'd personally start with C++, the cout << way of printing is clean and 
 obvious, but I wouldn't use C++ to teach OOP. Once we get past pointers 
 and structs, I'd move to Java.

 As for pascal .. well, I have a thing against it.
 It's all good and simple and all .. but once the code exceeds 50 lines, it 
 becomes very hard to debug and maintain it. Everything is so cluttered .. 
 there's simply no obvious boundaries between functions, and main becomes 
 hard to find without a comment.
 I always put a huge comment on it to help me find it
 (*
  *
  * MAIN
  *
  *)


C++ for beginners? yikes. A scripting language all the way - like python or 
(yes) BASIC or MATLAB (for the numerically minded). I'd even suggest Ruby if 
I knew anything about it <g>. A compiled language takes waaaay too long to 
get anything useful running. It's like teaching someone to read by giving 
them James Joyce's Ulysses.
Aug 14 2005
parent Dejan Lekic <leka entropy.tmok.com> writes:
Good point Mr. Hinkle. But, I would vote for an interpreter which has direct
access to memory resources, allocate them, is typed, and type-safe. Do You
know some which is good?
Oh, BTW, there is an excellent C/C++ interpreter, named CINT, which is
developed and used by CERN in their famous ROOT project.

-- 
...........
Dejan Lekic
  http://dejan.lekic.org
Aug 15 2005
prev sibling parent reply Fredrik Olsson <peylow gmail.com> writes:
Hasan Aljudy wrote:

 I would personally go for Java, but the problem is you're gonna have to 
 mention "class" before the students ever had a chance to know about 
 programming.
 


I think Java is terrible, utterly terrible for beginners. As a teacher I 
have had a hard time justifying why my students must declare the start 
of a program as "main" in C. Going through a dummy class with a static 
main is just too much; "just accept this kids, and look at this single 
line, the other 10 will be explained in due time."



 C is not bad, except the printf formatting thing isn't so 
 beginner-friendly.


C is also terrible for learners, because of all the exceptions. The 
trick is to teach the students what arrays and pointers are, what they 
are good for and why to use them. Good luck with C. And strings, ooh the 
strings. No too many of the simple things are just not simple enough with C.



 As for pascal .. well, I have a thing against it.
 It's all good and simple and all .. but once the code exceeds 50 lines, 
 it becomes very hard to debug and maintain it. Everything is so 
 cluttered .. there's simply no obvious boundaries between functions, and 
 main becomes hard to find without a comment.
 I always put a huge comment on it to help me find it
 (*
  *
  * MAIN
  *
  *)
 


Pascal IS excellent for teaching, mainle because it is consistent. Very 
few exceptions, and if you are a good teacher you will avoid them very 
easily (Did you know that you do not have to put a terminating ; on the 
last statement in a compound statement, just before the end;?). All data 
types or clear and distinct from each other, and all constructs follows 
the same patters; what it is, what it is named, what it does.

All good students eventually go on and try their wings at programming, 
and ozens upon dozens of my C students have tried to make a:
int foo(int a, b) { ... }
Well you just can not declare the arguments that way I have to tell 
them. But why? They look like variables? They allways say. There is no 
good answer to that one, so yet another; "just accept it".

When teaching in Pascal I do o need to do that. It is an obvious 
construct and Pascal allows for it. Even the structure of the main 
program is the same as for sub-programs, not even a need to explain to 
the students why; it is soo natural. And as a bonus the students who do 
try their wings using logic applied to their new skills hits the mark 
nine times out of ten, and their tries work out. They get confidence and 
dares to try more. And as we all know; trying and actually write 
programs is the best way to learn!

My experience says that students learn to code in C twice as fast if 
they only get a crash cource introduction in Pascal first. Then all you 
as a teacher have to say is; it is like this in Pascal, and give a good 
example and then draw up how it can be done in C (And try to make the 
best practice example :)).

As for D I think it can work as a learning language, at least ten times 
better then C and Java combined. Pascal is hard to beat. Only trouble I 
see in D for the first day of teaching is that strings are the same as 
an array of char. Not good; "the same as, but works this way", and "just 
accept this, it will be explained" are the wordst things you can say to 
your students. They lose interest, and they get uneccesary scared of the 
complexity that need not be there.

regards
	Fredrik Olsson
Aug 14 2005
next sibling parent reply "Ben Hinkle" <ben.hinkle gmail.com> writes:
 Only trouble I see in D for the first day of teaching is that strings are 
 the same as an array of char. Not good; "the same as, but works this way", 
 and "just accept this, it will be explained" are the wordst things you can 
 say to your students. They lose interest, and they get uneccesary scared 
 of the complexity that need not be there.


What do you mean by "the same as, but works this way"? Do you mean the utf-8 
encoding could have multi-byte chars?
Aug 15 2005
parent Fredrik Olsson <peylow gmail.com> writes:
Ben Hinkle wrote:

Only trouble I see in D for the first day of teaching is that strings are 
the same as an array of char. Not good; "the same as, but works this way", 
and "just accept this, it will be explained" are the wordst things you can 
say to your students. They lose interest, and they get uneccesary scared 
of the complexity that need not be there.


 
 
 What do you mean by "the same as, but works this way"? Do you mean the utf-8 
 encoding could have multi-byte chars? 
 


No I mean more of strings being arrays, that they really are is no 
problem. Problem is that in about minute ten of the first lesson you 
will bring up strings, and with a char[] you will quite possibly have to 
explain arrays briefly or tell a curious student to wait a bit longer 
for an explanation and just accept it for the moment. None of the 
options are good; a brief explaination of arrays ten minutes in, is far 
to early, telling a student to just accept something kills the curiosity 
and will to explore.

In D it could quite easily be fixed by having a default alias for char[] 
in string. Works good for Pascal, where string have always been an alias 
for an array of some sort. Fixed length 255 chars in old versions and a 
dynamic array in new. Explain strings, explain arrays and THEN tell them 
that strings can be used as arrays is far easier then trying to explain 
strings and arrays at the same time.

regards
	Fredrik Olsson
Aug 16 2005
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Hasan Aljudy <hasan.aljudy gmail.com> writes:
Fredrik Olsson wrote:

 Hasan Aljudy wrote:
 

 I would personally go for Java, but the problem is you're gonna have 
 to mention "class" before the students ever had a chance to know about 
 programming.


 I think Java is terrible, utterly terrible for beginners. As a teacher I 
 have had a hard time justifying why my students must declare the start 
 of a program as "main" in C. Going through a dummy class with a static 
 main is just too much; "just accept this kids, and look at this single 
 line, the other 10 will be explained in due time."


I mentioned java because it has a C style syntax but it's clear at the 
same time. The only problem is that it's entirely OO, so it's not really 
  for beginners.


 
 

 C is not bad, except the printf formatting thing isn't so 
 beginner-friendly.


 C is also terrible for learners, because of all the exceptions. The 
 trick is to teach the students what arrays and pointers are, what they 
 are good for and why to use them. Good luck with C. And strings, ooh the 
 strings. No too many of the simple things are just not simple enough 
 with C.
 
 

 As for pascal .. well, I have a thing against it.
 It's all good and simple and all .. but once the code exceeds 50 
 lines, it becomes very hard to debug and maintain it. Everything is so 
 cluttered .. there's simply no obvious boundaries between functions, 
 and main becomes hard to find without a comment.
 I always put a huge comment on it to help me find it
 (*
  *
  * MAIN
  *
  *)


 Pascal IS excellent for teaching, mainle because it is consistent. Very 
 few exceptions, and if you are a good teacher you will avoid them very 
 easily (Did you know that you do not have to put a terminating ; on the 
 last statement in a compound statement, just before the end;?). All data 
 types or clear and distinct from each other, and all constructs follows 
 the same patters; what it is, what it is named, what it does.
 
 All good students eventually go on and try their wings at programming, 
 and ozens upon dozens of my C students have tried to make a:
 int foo(int a, b) { ... }
 Well you just can not declare the arguments that way I have to tell 
 them. But why? They look like variables? They allways say. There is no 
 good answer to that one, so yet another; "just accept it".
 
 When teaching in Pascal I do o need to do that. It is an obvious 
 construct and Pascal allows for it. Even the structure of the main 
 program is the same as for sub-programs, not even a need to explain to 
 the students why; it is soo natural. And as a bonus the students who do 
 try their wings using logic applied to their new skills hits the mark 
 nine times out of ten, and their tries work out. They get confidence and 
 dares to try more. And as we all know; trying and actually write 
 programs is the best way to learn!


In the pascal course I took, lots of students asked lots of questions 
that are quite similar to "why is it called main?" and "why can't I do 
this?" and "why is it that way?". These questions will always be asked, 
and in my opinion that's a good thing .. asking these kinds of questions 
means the students really want to learn.

And that end-semicolon example you brought up .. is an excellent example 
of a case were C style syntax beats pascal's.
In pascal, there are times when "end" needs to be followed by a period, 
and other times where it needs to be followed by a semicolon, and other 
times where it can't be followed by anything, or else the structure of 
the code will break. Like for example in nested if-else blocks ... I 
never figured out what's the proper way to do them, which end should 
have the semicolon and which one shouldn't?

With C style syntax, it's very obvious: blocks start and end by { and }, 
nothing more, nothing less.


 
 My experience says that students learn to code in C twice as fast if 
 they only get a crash cource introduction in Pascal first. Then all you 
 as a teacher have to say is; it is like this in Pascal, and give a good 
 example and then draw up how it can be done in C (And try to make the 
 best practice example :)).


Maybe .. I did mention that I learned the concept of a function in C++ 
by relating it to GOSUB in basic, but I don't think it would've made 
that much of a difference (I mean if I didn't learn basic when I was a kid).

But um, when you give them a crash course in pascal then start teaching 
them C, you would already have spent "twice" the time to teach them 
programming .. no?


 
 As for D I think it can work as a learning language, at least ten times 
 better then C and Java combined. Pascal is hard to beat. Only trouble I 
 see in D for the first day of teaching is that strings are the same as 
 an array of char. Not good; "the same as, but works this way", and "just 
 accept this, it will be explained" are the wordst things you can say to 
 your students. They lose interest, and they get uneccesary scared of the 
 complexity that need not be there.


Well, D has things like AA and dynamic arrays -- not very good for 
beginners. Although if you can hide these concepts from them at first, 
then it'd probably work out pretty well. I personally don't know how you 
can hide that, seeing as strings are dynamic arrays.


 
 regards
     Fredrik Olsson
Aug 15 2005
parent Fredrik Olsson <peylow gmail.com> writes:
Hasan Aljudy wrote:


 In the pascal course I took, lots of students asked lots of questions 
 that are quite similar to "why is it called main?" and "why can't I do 
 this?" and "why is it that way?". These questions will always be asked, 
 and in my opinion that's a good thing .. asking these kinds of questions 
 means the students really want to learn.
 


Questions are good. But questions with no definitive answer except: 
"that is the way it is, and I can only agree it is silly", are bad.



 And that end-semicolon example you brought up .. is an excellent example 
 of a case were C style syntax beats pascal's.
 In pascal, there are times when "end" needs to be followed by a period, 
 and other times where it needs to be followed by a semicolon, and other 
 times where it can't be followed by anything, or else the structure of 
 the code will break. Like for example in nested if-else blocks ... I 
 never figured out what's the proper way to do them, which end should 
 have the semicolon and which one shouldn't?


The dot and semicolon question is easy; dots are only used for 
terminating program, unit and library statemets. Such as:
program foo;
begin
   WriteLn('Hello World.');
end. // Dot, this is a program.

procedure bar;
begin
end; // ;, this is a complete procedure declaration statement.

The rule is very firm and simple, and the example I gave you is the only 
exception (An exception not many know of anyway, and I have never seen 
it actually being used). The rule goes like this:
ALL complete statements and declarations MUST end with a semicolon.
Nothing hard at all, then all you need to know beyond that is that a 
statement can be a single statement or a compount statement. And then 
you need to know what a declaration is.

The reason for declarations requiring a semicolon as well is simple: if 
it did not require one you would have to introduce an exception to the 
rule to make forward declarations work. And in Pascal grammar one more 
rule is preffered over one more exception to another rule.


 With C style syntax, it's very obvious: blocks start and end by { and }, 
 nothing more, nothing less.
 


Just as { and } groups zero or more statements into a compount statement 
in C, begin and end does the same in Pascal. Nothing strange at all. 
What differs is Pascals conssistent requirement on terminating semicolon 
on complete statements, and C requiring it sometimes (structs) and 
making it optional otherwise.

But teaching Pascal or even worse explaining the superiority of Pascal 
over C for a someone that have learned C first is quite futile. For some 
reason it is almost impossible to unlearn the use of the many rules 
applied to C code, and relearn the single rule of Pascal. C code becomes 
the normality :). And even if you can explain your point it always goes 
down to "{} are just two characters, 'begin end' are eight.", and that 
is quite hard to argue with ;).



 
 Maybe .. I did mention that I learned the concept of a function in C++ 
 by relating it to GOSUB in basic, but I don't think it would've made 
 that much of a difference (I mean if I didn't learn basic when I was a 
 kid).
 
 But um, when you give them a crash course in pascal then start teaching 
 them C, you would already have spent "twice" the time to teach them 
 programming .. no?
 


Say you wany to teach the students to be 100% skilled C coders. Staring 
of with C would require a full five days.
Instead starting of with teaching them Pascal, would take two or max 
three days, and then a single day with "in C you do this instead". And 
you would have made them 100% skilled in a total of three or four days. 
The remaining time can be spend on teaching them some Java or becoming 
150% skilled in C.

The big problem with C is foremost that the language is hard to explain, 
Pascal is simply easier to read and memorize as it have barely no 
exceptions. And secondly you have to learn quite allot about quite 
complex things for beginners such as pointers, and momorize a whole 
bunch of functions from stdio.h and strings.h just to get strated. With 
Pascal you can ignore all that and do the simple stuff really simple. 
Anfd then day two you can still do pointers and teach them to a buffer 
overflow vulnerability of you like.


 
 Well, D has things like AA and dynamic arrays -- not very good for 
 beginners. Although if you can hide these concepts from them at first, 
 then it'd probably work out pretty well. I personally don't know how you 
 can hide that, seeing as strings are dynamic arrays.


Arrays can be tought in about hour four, and dynamic arrays are not more 
hard for new people then static ones. The hard part is that there is no 
clear distinction of arrays and pointers in C, and no run-time and 
barely no compile time checking at all. There D does wonders!

The strings are problematic, form a teaching perspective a default alias 
for char[] to string would be good. Begginers are quite reuctant to 
trying out something as daring as char[][], but doing a string[] they 
will find the use for quite fast. And then telling them that string is 
the same as a char[] is no biggie day two.

regards
	Fredrik Olsson
Aug 16 2005
prev sibling parent reply Dave <Dave_member pathlink.com> writes:
In article <ddpeco$93j$1 digitaldaemon.com>, Fredrik Olsson says...

Hasan Aljudy wrote:

As for D I think it can work as a learning language, at least ten times 
better then C and Java combined. Pascal is hard to beat. Only trouble I 
see in D for the first day of teaching is that strings are the same as 
an array of char. Not good; "the same as, but works this way", and "just 
accept this, it will be explained" are the wordst things you can say to 
your students. They lose interest, and they get uneccesary scared of the 
complexity that need not be there.


Perhaps that could be 'glossed' over on the first day by: "In any programming
language, a string is made up of a list of contiguous characters, also known as
an array. We will go over arrays in more detail later in the course, but for
now, this is how you declare and initialize a string in the D language: char[]
str = "Hello World";" or something like that. Granted, you're forced to
introduce the concept of arrays very early, but I don't see how the syntax
itself would be much more difficult to grasp than Pascal.

You could use a module that declares an alias char[] String; too (along with
importing things like std.stdio and such).

import D101; // import std.stdio; alias char[] String;

void main()
{
String s = "Hello World!";
writefln(s);
}

If an effective way could be used to teach through that issue for the newest of
beginners, then D would also be an excellent language for continued eductation
of 'advanced' concepts like OOP, PwC (contracts) and even some assembly w/o
having to introduce other languages into a course series.


regards
	Fredrik Olsson
Aug 15 2005
parent reply Fredrik Olsson <peylow gmail.com> writes:
Dave wrote:

 
 Perhaps that could be 'glossed' over on the first day by: "In any programming
 language, a string is made up of a list of contiguous characters, also known as
 an array. We will go over arrays in more detail later in the course, but for
 now, this is how you declare and initialize a string in the D language: char[]
 str = "Hello World";" or something like that. Granted, you're forced to
 introduce the concept of arrays very early, but I don't see how the syntax
 itself would be much more difficult to grasp than Pascal.
 


To gloss over is never a good idea, and should be avoided at all costs. 
Beginners simply do not like to not grasp everything, the very first 
example you show them should be able to stand on it's own. If it can 
stand on it's own the students will feel secure and the initial fear 
will go away imidiately.


 You could use a module that declares an alias char[] String; too (along with
 importing things like std.stdio and such).
 
 import D101; // import std.stdio; alias char[] String;
 
 void main()
 {
 String s = "Hello World!";
 writefln(s);
 }
 


This is a very good example. D101 can easily be said called "a bunch of 
helper stuff I made you for this course". Only problem I see is that 
with import you will have to explain the concept of modules as well :).

The good thing with Pascal having char[] "predeclared" as string, and 
writefln (WriteLn) builtin in the system unit, that is always linked in, 
is that when you come to explaining arrays you can allways tell the 
students that they have used some already without knowing it.


 If an effective way could be used to teach through that issue for the newest of
 beginners, then D would also be an excellent language for continued eductation
 of 'advanced' concepts like OOP, PwC (contracts) and even some assembly w/o
 having to introduce other languages into a course series.
 


As I said I think D could be an excelent language for teaching. Add 
char[] alias and std.stdio as a default linkage (Patched student version 
maybe :) ), and it would be perfect.

Only problem I see is lack of books, will be quite hard to get it 
accepted at the University if there are no literature for it :/.

regards
	Fredrik Olsson
Aug 16 2005
parent reply acerimusdux <acerimusdux_member pathlink.com> writes:
I would think something like Python would be the logical choice for a modern
teaching language.  Simple things are simple (print "Hello World"), and you can
proceed logically from the simpler programs introducing input, output, strings,
variables, common flow control constructs (if, else, for, and while loops), data
types, on to more advanced areas like functions, modules, exception handling
(try, except, finally, as well as assert), and even the basic concepts of object
oriented programming.  

And the "whitespace as seperator" model encourages good code organization habits
which will become useful later on in laguages like C where readable code
requires some programmer discipline and adherence to conventions. 

Moreover, good documentation and tutorials are readily avaiable (a must for the
more motivated students who will want to explore learning materials available
outside of the classroom), as are good free interpreters for all common
operating environments, with extensive online help.  There is also a wealth of
good simple code examples available to learn from.

From there, you can move on to a more robust OO environment, such as Java, C++,
Ada, or D for more complex applications, or for more control for system level
work, something like C/C++ or D.  While D might be an ideal language for someone
interested in studying language design, it's probably one of the worst choices
for a first language for a beginner.  I think to fully appreciate D, it's
probably better to first have an understanding of both the strengths and limits
of the more common laguages it hopes to replace.
Aug 17 2005
parent Derek Parnell <derek psych.ward> writes:
On Wed, 17 Aug 2005 22:33:09 +0000 (UTC), acerimusdux wrote:


 I would think something like Python would be the logical choice for a modern
 teaching language.  


I've kept out of this discussion before now mainly because it is so easy to
drift off into 'religious wars about languages. However I'll risk that to
mention the language called Euphoria. For most of the same reasons that
Python might be considered, I feel that this is also worth a look at.

  http://www.rapideuphoria.com/

It is simple, interpreted, bloody fast, and focuses on programming rather
than computers (no need to know about RAM and storage formats, etc...)

-- 
Derek
(skype: derek.j.parnell)
Melbourne, Australia
18/08/2005 9:36:01 AM
Aug 17 2005