Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!necntc!frog!john
From: john@frog.UUCP (John Woods, Software)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: First Languages (yet again)
Message-ID: <2078@frog.UUCP>
Date: 18 Feb 88 22:52:00 GMT
References: <4022@ames.arpa> <2400002@otter.HP.COM> <932@its63b.ed.ac.uk> <545@tuck.nott-cs.UUCP>
Organization: Superfrog Heaven [ CRDS, Framingham MA ]
Lines: 43

In article <545@tuck.nott-cs.UUCP>, anw@nott-cs.UUCP writes:
>In article <1154@zen.UUCP> vic@zen.UUCP (Victor Gavin) writes:
>>One of the main problems that I have noticed in classes is all the snotty
> 								     ^^^^^^
>>nosed kids who have ``learned'' to program at home on their BASIC computers,
> ^^^^^
>>*all by themselves*.
> 	We obviously have a better class of student than you do.  Why knock
>     people who are motivated enough to do something "all by themselves"?
> >Unfortunately their methods and practices usually stink.
> 	We obviously have a better class of student than you do.

Indeed, I learned BASIC "all by myself" in early high school (though I learned
it on the school's computer).  I also became quite a fan of Warnier-Orr
diagrams, and thus learned to structure code in a language that had no concept
of it (Dartmouth-style BASIC, none of this extension nonsense).

>     ...[name your favourite language]... Further, their Basic on a home
>     computer very likely runs rings around [nyfl] on [nyf computer] when
>     it comes to graphics, sound, games, etc.

Their machine might even run rings around [nyf computer] in terms of speed:
as a Freshman at MIT, I wrote a toy LISP interpreter in BASIC (largely to
irritate those who asserted that BASIC was on a lower plane of existance)
on a TRS-80 that a friend of mine had.  He then proceeded to USE that LISP
for assignments during the last week of school, because the load average on
MIT-MULTICS had passed infinite about a week before that... :-)

If you can show people that your concepts help ease programming, those who
will ever pick it up will do so, and happily; those who don't, probably
would not anyway.  If you show people that they are insignificant little worms
for ever having learned something that you disapprove of, you'll just
preach to the converted.


--
John Woods, Charles River Data Systems, Framingham MA, (617) 626-1101
...!decvax!frog!john, ...!mit-eddie!jfw, jfw@eddie.mit.edu

"Cutting the space budget really restores my faith in humanity.  It
eliminates dreams, goals, and ideals and lets us get straight to the
business of hate, debauchery, and self-annihilation."
		-- Johnny Hart