Re: [Discuss] Phrases to avoid when teaching

2016-03-25 Thread Steven Haddock
> It seems like you are using an appeal to reason with your collaborator and > that appeal is not working. I don’t have a suggestion for your specific case, > but you might consider what concerns/fears your collaborator might have for > sticking with perl; i.e. what is your collaborator's

Re: [Discuss] Phrases to avoid when teaching

2016-03-25 Thread Greg Wilson
On 2016-03-25 10:21 AM, Steve Haddock wrote: To further digress, What can I say to my old-school collaborator who insists on teaching his students PERL, de novo? He claims not to like Python's cryptic error reporting. (I agree but there is so much to offset this.) I have tried everything

Re: [Discuss] Phrases to avoid when teaching

2016-03-25 Thread Bennet Fauber
My first programming language was TeX. ;-) I try to steer people to asking a better question, in ways alluded to in many of the responses. I often end up replying with "Best for what?" If the questioner is asking about best to learn programming?, then there probably isn't a best language.

Re: [Discuss] Phrases to avoid when teaching

2016-03-25 Thread C. Titus Brown
On Fri, Mar 25, 2016 at 03:33:55PM +0100, Giuseppe Profiti wrote: > Hi Titus, > I have a couple of questions about your mail. > > 2016-03-25 14:52 GMT+01:00 C. Titus Brown : > > My usual response to the question of "what programming language should I > > learn?" is: > > > > *

Re: [Discuss] Phrases to avoid when teaching

2016-03-25 Thread Robin Wilson
I've had similar discussions with people at my university who insist on teaching IDL (for those who have no experience, a commercial scientific programming language that has fairly limited use these days). Many of the students I have spoken to have said that after getting out of university they

Re: [Discuss] Phrases to avoid when teaching

2016-03-25 Thread Joshua Ryan Smith Ph.D.
Steve, It seems like you are using an appeal to reason with your collaborator and that appeal is not working. I don’t have a suggestion for your specific case, but you might consider what concerns/fears your collaborator might have for sticking with perl; i.e. what is your collaborator's deeper

Re: [Discuss] Phrases to avoid when teaching

2016-03-25 Thread Giuseppe Profiti
Hi Titus, I have a couple of questions about your mail. 2016-03-25 14:52 GMT+01:00 C. Titus Brown : > My usual response to the question of "what programming language should I > learn?" is: > > * Python or R, because those are the two languages being used by many >

Re: [Discuss] Phrases to avoid when teaching

2016-03-25 Thread Pat Schloss
I tell people that my only CS course was taught in Pascal (this gets a few laughs) and that I don’t remember any of it. I add that learning Pascal set me up to learn pretty much any language I needed much easier than the first time through Pascal. Finally, I point out that they may learn

Re: [Discuss] Phrases to avoid when teaching

2016-03-25 Thread C. Titus Brown
My only suggestion is to maybe point out that Perl is probably not what his students will be using once they leave his group. But there are many good responses to that. He may not care that Perl is not being used in industry much anymore, either, but I think this is important for people who

Re: [Discuss] Phrases to avoid when teaching

2016-03-25 Thread Steve Haddock
To further digress, What can I say to my old-school collaborator who insists on teaching his students PERL, de novo? He claims not to like Python's cryptic error reporting. (I agree but there is so much to offset this.) I have tried everything including translating his code to Python to show

Re: [Discuss] Phrases to avoid when teaching

2016-03-25 Thread C. Titus Brown
My usual response to the question of "what programming language should I learn?" is: * Python or R, because those are the two languages being used by many computational scientists, being actively developed, and with rich existing ecosystems of libraries and tutorials; * choose between them

Re: [Discuss] Phrases to avoid when teaching

2016-03-25 Thread Lex Nederbragt
> On 25 Mar 2016, at 00:04, alexsa...@gmail.com wrote: > > The best programming language is the one that allows you to do what you want > in the timeline you have to with the efficiency you need while keeping it > simple enough for you and for the ones that will come to read the code. >

Re: [Discuss] Phrases to avoid when teaching

2016-03-25 Thread Erik Bray
On Thu, Mar 24, 2016 at 11:27 PM, Giuseppe Profiti wrote: > Anyways, "what is the best programming language?" is something that > they asked. I have my programming language of choice, but the > demotivation section in SWC guidelines helped in devising a better > answer