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From: ken@argus.UUCP (Kenneth Ng)
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: Re: first language
Message-ID: <1011@argus.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 20-Aug-87 09:48:09 EDT
Article-I.D.: argus.1011
Posted: Thu Aug 20 09:48:09 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 22-Aug-87 10:08:34 EDT
References: <405@ndsuvax.UUCP> <1010@argus.UUCP> <7035@steinmetz.steinmetz.UUCP>
Organization: NJ Instit. of Tech: TEIES Project
Lines: 50
Keywords: expense availability

In article <7035@steinmetz.steinmetz.UUCP>, jesup@steinmetz.steinmetz.UUCP (Randell Jesup) writes:
[edited comment on Ada being a big language]
> And don't EVER let a novice near the LRM! (Language Ref. Man.).

Agreed, but there are plenty of books out on Ada now (of course after
I learned the language from the @#%$^#$ LRM).

: 	My personal guess would be that Modula-II would be a good first
: language.  It has strong type checking (good for novices), the syntax is
: simple enough that they won't spend all their time learning it, and
: it supports modularization and data-hiding well.  It isn't overgrown with
: features, but for a first class you should be learning how to apply concepts,
: not how to use zillions of features.  Leave that until you understand what's
: going on.
: 	Before anyone accuses me of being a modula freak, I've never programmed
: in modula, for most of my work I prefer C or forth, depending on the
: project.  But from examing modula, I believe Wirth has come up with a
: reasonable teaching language.  (MUCH better than pascal)

I disagree.  I find it an irritant in Modula-2 having to say WriteInteger,
WriteReal, WriteConstantString, and so forth.  The Ada 'put' is easier
for the student to remember.  Let the compiler do some of the work.  Also
both Pascal and Modula-2 have the irritating property of allowing one
to directly use '+', '-', '*', and '/' with the types provided with the
compiler, but not with the types defined by oneself.  Ada lets me forget
having to remember that I can do an add with '+' for integers and reals,
but I must use vector_add to add my two vectors.

: >I'd like to recommend the REXX language for beginners.  It's got
: >a very simple data structure, pascal like syntax, and was designed
: >from the beginning to be a readable language, unlike C and Lisp.
: 	Also may be a good idea.  Definitely oriented towards non-computer
: users (thing like choosing limits, such as precision, to be 'round' numbers
: so mundanes can remember them easily (like 500 digits precision instead of
: 512)).  

And I've recently read that in the IBM VM environments, REXX within
a couple of years has become THE language to write new code in.  On
the other hand with an alternative language like EXEC2 I can see why (;-> .
All that is needed now is an implementation for Unix.  (I'll need a
year or two, context sensitive languages are a bitch to parse.)
; 	Randell Jesup
; 	jesup@steinmetz.UUCP
; 	jesup@ge-crd.arpa



Kenneth Ng: Post office: NJIT - CCCC, Newark New Jersey  07102
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