About programing, a general question

[Bill Davidsen]

Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> On 12/17/2010 06:28 PM, Robert Myers wrote:
>> On Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 3:54 AM, Les<hlhowell at pacbell.net>   wrote:
>>> On Fri, 2010-12-17 at 10:00 +0000, John Haxby wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 17 December 2010 09:41, Ralf Corsepius<rc040203 at freenet.de>   wrote:
>>>>
>>>>           That said, I'd choose "C" to getting started. It's a bit of a
>>>>           rough ride
>>>>           in the beginning, but it pays off in longer terms.
>
>> And many of the things that are dangerous/subtle/hard-to-learn about c
>> are much less obscure if you are an assembly-language programmer.  In
>> fact, they seem quite natural.  Trouble is, they will *not* seem
>> natural to a beginning programmer.
> Exactly. "C" tends to expose many of the low-level details and the
> concepts behind them (e.g. pointers, addresses, registers,
> bit-operations, word-sizes, interfacing with other langu).
>
> That's why I prefer exposing newcomers to these concepts early in their,
> e.g. by choosing "C". Also worth mentioning is them learning and
> understanding the concept of "preprocessing", "compilation" and at least
> some details of linkage, details which many interpreted languages hide
> away from them.
>
Before doing pointers I always taught the control structures, the three part 
"for" loop, vs. loop with the test at the start vs. test at the end. Which loops 
can execute zero times, which at least once? Why?

C is one of the richest languages ever, and was at the time of the first 
standard (I was GE's rep to X3J11), and recent additions have made it even more 
powerful.

However, I still like perl for a teaching language, because it can do math, 
strings, and networking. It's forgiving, just about anything you write will do 
{something}, often rewarding muddy thinking. I like C for systems work, although 
I use a lot more bash than I used to.

-- 
Bill Davidsen <davidsen at tmr.com>
   "We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from
the machinations of the wicked."  - from Slashdot