I remember 101 in Pascal, switched at semester break to Modula-2 ; both sweet 
languages . 

However my first "programming" course was "Recipe Development" in my Culinary Arts 
days.

--- [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> > I think there is a mistaken assumption in the question that was first 
> > asked, and that many seem to have taken at face value: that Java is an 
> > appropriate language for learning programming. I don't think this is true.
> 
> hi all!
> I will not contribute anything to the "tim-thread", 'nuff said ;o)
> as I am giving courses for developers ranging from fundamental programming
> logic,
> C, OO basics, OOA/OOD, C++ and JAVA I want to express my opinion on 
> the above statement (with which I choose to disagree ;o)
> I myself started with BASIC on a C64 at the age of 12 I think (some while
> ago ;)
> and accumulated I think 18 languages so far (most of them not used actively
> any more of course).
> I do not think that BASIC (be it QBASIC, VB or whatever) is a very good
> place to start.
> all developers I meet/met that come either from procedural languages (host
> development with
> COBOL, PL/1, Fortran or the like) or from VB (not *really* OO ;o) do have
> extreme difficulties to get rid of a bunch of nasty habits that are a direct
> consequence of the languages they worked in (for quite a while mostly)
> PASCAL is a good start for getting a grasp on the concepts of structured
> programming, but the syntax
> is quite far off if you want to go into the C++/JAVA direction. (BTW,
> talking of learning languages...
> does anyone remember MODULA 2?  quite a good thing, the successor of PASCAL,
> also
> conceived by nicolaus wirth, inventor of PASCAL. later he did OBERON which
> never got a catch 
> in the industry despite of having some great concepts)
> some postings suggested C as a beginners language. I do not think that is
> quite a good idea either,
> too many catches for the rookie, think of explicit memory handling, side
> effects, missing boolean type,
> pointers etc etc...
> if you want to show the basic procedural concepts, why not use the
> procedural parts of JAVA?
> it is perfectly possible to write simple demo programs without knowing
> anything about the OO syntax/concepts (ok, you have to declare an enclosing  class
> and a main-method; count that and "System.out.println()" as a "cooking
> recipe" and explain that later on ;o)
> so, to make a long story short: PASCAL or MODULA 2 if you do not care about
> C/C++/JAVA-like syntax.
> else JAVA ;o) 
> cheers
> 
> PS:
> 
> > Java introduces two important and difficult topics at the same time: 
> > programming and object-oriented design. Because they're so intertwined in 
> > Java, it's hard to get a handle of one if you don't already have a handle 
> > on the other.
> 
> well, yes, so do not introduce them at the same time ;o) OO-knowledge is not
> necessary
> to use JAVA for examples of simple iterators, selectors and all procedural
> stuff.
> 
> -- 
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> 
> 
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=====

Mark Zawadzki Performance Engineer/DBA/Programmer extraordinaire� [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

 "Democracies die behind closed doors," - Judge Damon Keith


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