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From: c9c-ra@dorothy.Berkeley.EDU (A Ozselcuk)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Is it possible to teach PROGRAMMING iin FORTRAN
Message-ID: <4486@zen.berkeley.edu>
Date: Tue, 20-Oct-87 13:39:21 EDT
Article-I.D.: zen.4486
Posted: Tue Oct 20 13:39:21 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 21-Oct-87 22:44:29 EDT
Sender: news@zen.berkeley.edu
Reply-To: c9c-ra@dorothy.Berkeley.EDU (A Ozselcuk)
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Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Lines: 43

Hello Everyone,

I have been getting mostly flames and a few encouraging remarkss
about the article I posted in a few days ago.  (It was saying that
FORTRAN needs reserved words and STRUCTURES)

I belong to an organization which teaches programming to
Students and is called 'Self Paced Computer Center, U C Berkeley. 
(I am just a TA)
The enviironment is not a classsroom-lecture-lab but that of a 
tutor and the student  (At the students' pace).

Basically we teach elementary programming in Pascal and in FORTRAN.
(We teach C but it is not an elementary programming course)
Therefore we have to deal with students (ONE TO ONE BASIS) who are
learning  programming.

It is my observation that the students who learn Pascal turn out
to be better programmers than the FORTRAN people.  One of the reasons
is the lack of strong type checking(and reserved words)
and the other is the lack of **good constructs**. 

In short Pascal students tend to write more readable and coherent 
programs than FORTRAN folks and their programming style is more disciplined.

I cannot say anything about the existence of 'billions and billions' of
existing SPAGHETTI code (I am dealing with such a monster these days)
but it should not be an  excuse for improving the language.

ON SECOND THOUGHT:

Maybe I am reacting to the decision of a Committe at UC which has chosen
FORTRAN one of the languages to teach **programming**.

Maybe we should just leave the language alone and don't teach
programming in FORTRAN.  Anyone who knows Pascal or any other structured
language can learn FORTRAN in a week and is  probably better off.

(I guess the folks at IBM and DEC would like my second thoughts)

					Peace be with You.

	A. (What we are doing here while DOW is plunging down) Ozselcuk