Xref: utzoo comp.org.acm:170 alt.religion.computers:2471 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!mcsun!ukc!slxsys!ibmpcug!mantis!mathew From: mathew@mantis.co.uk (CNEWS MUST DIE!) Newsgroups: comp.org.acm,alt.religion.computers Subject: Re: BASIC (was Re: Contests (was Re: Yet another posting...:))) Message-ID: Date: 10 May 91 16:38:15 GMT References: Organization: Mantis Consultants, Cambridge. UK. Lines: 28 rang@cs.wisc.edu (Anton Rang) writes: > In article <1991May9.010805.21605@mcs.kent.edu> rothstei@mcs.kent.edu (Michae > >"It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students who've > >had a prior exposure to Basic; as potential programmers they are mentally > >mutilated beyond hope of regeneration." Edsgar Dijkstra > > Actually, I'm quite happy with BASIC. It was my first language. Fear not, for it is possible to recover from BASIC. It was my first language, too, and I used to think it was quite good for hacking together quick example programs. Then came revision time for my Computer Science degree. I decided to try out a few of the algorithms I had been taught, in the hope that playing with them would help me to learn them. I dug out my Structured BASIC interpreter, and I was overjoyed to discover that I couldn't remember how to write BASIC. I couldn't even put together a simple three-line function. I struggled for a couple of minutes... then fired up my Lisp system and used that. It was a proud moment. I suddenly felt that I could truly call myself a computer scientist. mathew