I'm going to teach programming to somebody who's going to study it more formally in a year, but wants to be learning part of it in the mean time.
What SIMPLE, CLEAN, STRUCTURED language would you recommend me to use for teaching? Please, refrain from language wars as this is not a fanboy thread but a serious question. Before yuo mention it, I'm not going to start with either Python or Ruby because they're too complex and get too much in the way, and no, I'm not stupid enough to start with Java because a radical OO language (and a crappy one at that) with a shitty enterprise API is not the best either.
I'm thinking Pascal. As much as it sucks, it has strict/anal types (it's better to start anal than to start easy-going and botch it), simple yet not messy syntax, simple stdin/stdout input and output to play with (that's all I'll need), and none of the complexity of OO. Yet it sounds so useless. But I don't know of other languages that meet these requirements.
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Anonymous2006-09-22 20:36
Back on topic...
I'm being taught Alice in CS105. ;_;
As a hobbiest programmer of more than 16 years I'm irritated to have to jump through the hoops to get a formal education, but looking at that crap makes me think it might be worth letting a student with no experience play with it for a week or two before teaching a more advanced (yet still basic) language.
difference between hobbyist and pro is the pro did made a site for his pa and got paid for it.
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Anonymous2006-09-24 22:26
Ruby is too hard to start out with?
I'm in the same situation as your friend, and my friend who is in your situation is teaching me Ruby, I've only had half a lesson over the phone, but it worked out fine.
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Anonymous2006-09-25 8:51
I guess if you omit the more obscure, abstract features of the language, you could do fine with Ruby or Python. Just make sure you play with the basics before even bothering to look what's a class object or a closure.
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Anonymous2010-03-16 19:51
Why can't we have interesting flamewarsdiscussions like this anymore?
>>90
We do, but they're extra hard to find with all this necrobumping.
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Anonymous2010-03-16 20:54
>>91
I am deeply offended! I slave over a hot anus all day, looking for interesting threads to bump, and you can't even appreciate all the work I do! Why don't you just go back to that whore, Leah Culver?
data structures are nouns, functions are verbs, operands are adjectives.... you get my point.
actually, just switch up to teaching linguistics, and mathematics.
programming languages are just slutty representations of those.
>>40
This, I agree with VB. I also started myself with it, it's the first language I was teached at college and we were clearly told it was the shit tier of the programming world. Most of us there learn good habits at first and we learned a lot from it, then moved to Java/C++/PHP/blah blah and eventually went back to .NET with C#/VB for optimum corporate performance today.
- Soon to be Microsoft certified ENTERPRISE developer
>>117
Now You Just Make Up Acronyms. Its a /frog/ meme.
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Anonymous2010-03-18 18:46
Basic is basic enough
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Anonymous2010-03-19 2:08
To all you assholes who are saying Visual Basic
"It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration."