MIT's freshman survey, EECS 1 is taught in Python and Scheme, soon to be
just Python.
-Star
On Wed, 25 Jul 2007, Bruno Desthuilliers wrote:
Omari Norman a écrit :
On Mon, Jul 23, 2007 at 10:48:10PM -0700, Paul Rubin wrote:
If you're having trouble with Python because you're new at
programming, I can sympathize--I don't think it's the most
beginner-friendly of languages despite the efforts in that direction
by the designers.
Just curious--what language would you recommend as most
beginner-friendly?
C ?-)
(sorry, just kidding.)
My previous programming experience was with BASIC--and I think it is
true that BASIC will, in many ways, rot your brain.
So will Java.
I learned programming with Hypertalk (MacIntosh's Hypercard scripting
language, which more or less gave birth to AppleTalk), then RealBasic
(Mac's Better VB-like), then VB, then Java, then C, then bits of Pascal,
then Python, and this is where I started to see the light. But I had
hard time unlearning all those java-ish anal-retentive stupidities and
arbitrary overcomplexifications before I really enjoyed Python. Playing
with Lisp (Common Lisp and Scheme) and Smalltalk helped getting rid of
mental pollution wrt/ declarative static typing. To be honest, playing
with Haskell and O'Caml also helped me understanding that static typing
is not necessarily bad by itself.
I had used QBasic
and, later, a little VBA and some PHP. It took some time to unlearn some
bad things (object orientation in VBA seems to be mostly a hack, for
example, while PHP seems to be a big hack generally)
Well... this is not exactly a scoop !-)
but it seems to me
that Python helped me learn my first modern programming language.
I think Python is not used in university programs very much. Look for
one that uses SICP (Scheme) or CTM (Mozart/Oz) or a functional
language like Haskell, in preference to the ones that use Java (the
Cobol of the 1990's). With some reasonable experience in Scheme or
Mozart or Haskell, plus a Python manual, you'll be well on your way.
I had heard of these languages, but learning them is a bit discouraging
because (Java excepted) they don't seem to get much practical use.
Before considering practical use (FWIW, Python was pretty far from
mainstream 7 year ago), you should ask yourself how learning one of
these languages will affect the way you thing about programming. While
mostly in the imperative/OO camp, Python stole quite a lot from
functional languages, and this is obviously a GoodThing(tm).
My 2 cents
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