On Fri, Apr 07, 2000 at 04:39:25PM -0400, Andrea Zamecnik wrote:
> Have You ever thought about JAVA? I realize that its object orientedness
I have and won't comment so as not to turn this email into a flame ;)
> Deitel & Deitel's JAVA - How to Program. Its kind of expensive and doesn't
Deitel & Deitel rule. I haven't read their Java book, but their C/C++
book just rocks. It is what I learned with, and it was a great
treatment of the language, with a lot of attention to good program
design and good habits for readability.
> go over the base OO concepts very well, but its a good programming
> reference. As a 4th year comp sci student who has had to learn many
> languages very quickly, I have to say I find C to be the most excruciating
> language I have ever learned.
C is a procedural language that can be taught as a structured language.
On top of that, it is also a useful language which can be used for
anything -- as opposed to Pascal. The value of this is that it is
useful to the new programmer right away and it can* be a good tool for
learning to program the Right Way(tm) :)
Also, OO is a rather advanced abstraction. I didn't get it the first
time I tried to pick it up (with a rather poor C++ book, not Dietel &
Dietel). Of course, I also didn't have an instructor to go with the
reading, but procedural is still easier to think in than OO.
BTW, I'm working on my 7th language: x86 assembly, and it is a real
trip, again, it has its uses. I got accepted into Pre-Engineering at
UW, I intend to go into Computer Engineering (most college's offer it as
EE/CS), so it is nice to learn more about how the actual hardware works
in box, and what the CPU actually does when you say:
while (expression) {
/* code */
}
Don't get me wrong, OO has its place. It is a great abstraction and
makes some things way easier.
* I have to qualify that statement, see http://www.ioccc.org
--
Jeff
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