Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!torsqnt!lethe!yunexus!davecb
From: davecb@yunexus.UUCP (David Collier-Brown)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: introductory language (meaningfull?)
Message-ID: <9784@yunexus.UUCP>
Date: 9 Apr 90 12:36:57 GMT
References: <7300008@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> <1990Apr5.000825.20643@usenet.ins.cwru.edu>
Organization: York U. Computing Services
Lines: 27


  I wonder if people are forgetting a cardinal rule of programming:
to write **into** a language, instead of **in** it.

  It was beaten into my recalcitrant brain in the punch-card era
at Windsor, and I noted later that it was alive and well in introductory
computer science at Waterloo and UofToronto, so I'm surprised that it hasn't
surfaced in this forum for a long time (:-)).


  I claim the first language is important, but not critical if one
teaches the students to think in terms of simple, representable
constructs.  The language then used should contain the constructs,
and should have good diagnostics.  Bad error messages are worse
that bad languages, IMHO!
  If one has to use C or PL/C or FORTRAN, one had best work on course
content **carefully**, and pick a good compiler[1].  UofT has one of
the better home-made languages, which comes in graduated subsets: this
make it easier to get away with a bad course outline (:-}).

--dave (at Ork, a competing university) c-b
[1] I recommend RedC, a **good** student compiler. 
-- 
David Collier-Brown,  | davecb@Nexus.YorkU.CA, ...!yunexus!davecb or
72 Abitibi Ave.,      | {toronto area...}lethe!dave 
Willowdale, Ontario,  | "And the next 8 man-months came up like
CANADA. 416-223-8968  |   thunder across the bay" --david kipling