Iftach Hyams wrote on 2003-06-11: > > >> Maybe this makes Fortran easier to start with, ... > > What is the mission ? Basic programming enough for "Bagroot" ? > Is so, Fortran can be enough. If the aim if good practice, > methodology and pragmatism, Fortran is considered 'ded'. > > For a procedural language - Pascal is fine.
It has no concept of libraries and separate compilation. It's not an incident that Wirth next language was called Modula :-). It encourages static-sized array (the one common thing of all school programs was ``const N = 100``), AKA "C programmer's disease" - except that in Pascal it's even harder to shake it off. Statically sized arrays are absolutely useless in the real world, except as a dirty optimization. > It encourage student to write neat code (unlike 'C'). The only things it encouragined me to do were: (1) find a TSR for keyboard macros and bind keys to ``begin`` / ``end`` and (2) search the internet until I found p2c and installed it ;-). If boring the student is bad, irritating him is twice bad. And a student that is not irritated by Pascal wasn't taught well - he can't tell good tools from bad ones. > If OO is an issue, the Ada is a good option : > * It is very strict with syntax and structure. > * It can imitate Pascal programs. > * It has readable OO capabilities. > * It encapsulation as a default. > * It hides OS specific API's (tasks, semaphores etc.). > * It has free compilers for students (GNAT, GCC > 3) for both > Windows and Linux. > * It is (very) well documented. > Ada is designed by a committee. I never tried it but from what I heard it's at least about half C++'s size. That absolutely rules it out as a first language in my book. A beginner must be able to remember at least 95% of the language, easily. -- Beni Cherniavsky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Premature classification is the superclass of all evil. ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
