On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 11:59 AM, Grant Edwards <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote: > On 2013-12-17, Wolfgang Keller <felip...@gmx.net> wrote: > >>> I was also taught C as an undergrad but having already learned Java, C >>> and C++ before arriving at University I found the C course very easy >>> so my own experience is not representative. Many of the other students >>> at that time found the course too hard and just cheated on all the >>> assignments (I remember one students offering to fix/finish anyone's >>> assignment in exchange for a bottle of cider!).
I did that, but my fee was a case of beer. >> >> The problem with the C class wasn't that it was "hard". I had passed my >> Pascal class, which taught nearly exactly the same issues with >> "straight A"s before (without ever having writeen any source code ever >> before). And by standard cognitive testing standards, I'm not exactly >> considered to be an idiot. > > I agree that C is a awful pedagogical language. When I was in > university, the first language for Computer Science or Computer > Engineering students was Pascal. After that, there were classes that > surveyed Prolog, SNOBOL, LISP, Modula, APL, FORTRAN, COBOL, etc. If > you were an "other" engineering/science major, you learned FORTRAN > first (and last). I think there may also have been some business > types who were taught BASIC. > > C wasn't taught at all. It wasn't for me either when I went to college in the late 1970's. Pascal first, then FORTRAN, then IBM 360 assembler. That was all the formal language training I had. (I had taught myself BASIC in high school.) -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
