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Python Bumps Off Java As Top Learning Language

Posted by Soulskill on from the from-college-import-education dept.

itwbennett writes: Python has surpassed Java as the top language used to introduce U.S. students to programming and computer science, according to a recent survey posted by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). Eight of the top 10 computer science departments now use Python to teach coding, as well as 27 of the top 39 schools, indicating that it is the most popular language for teaching introductory computer science courses, according to Philip Guo, a computer science researcher who compiled the survey for ACM."

66 of 415 comments (clear)

  1. Re:another language shoved down your throat by short · · Score: 2

    not will but it is

  2. Re:another language shoved down your throat by szmccauley · · Score: 5, Funny

    could have been worse, it could have been javascript

  3. Which raises the critical question: by MAXOMENOS · · Score: 5, Interesting

    2.x or 3.x?

    --
    Finding God in a Dog
    1. Re:Which raises the critical question: by tippe · · Score: 5, Funny

      Who cares? Isn't the critical question always what editor they should program with? Everyone knows that real programmers use vim. Long live vim!

      Here: something to distract you while I go duck under a desk

    2. Re:Which raises the critical question: by ShadowRangerRIT · · Score: 5, Informative

      I really hope 3.x, if only for the fact that your code tends to work with non-English text by default, because str supports the whole Unicode range, so it works with non-English input by default. Compare to 2.x where you have to make a conscious effort to work with Unicode. Particularly important for third party libraries, where they aren't producing a final application, and often don't think about Unicode at all even for text based APIs. Heck, the Python built-in csv module in 2.7 doesn't work properly with Unicode; you have to load or convert as UTF-8 bytes, parse, then decode to the 2.7 unicode type. It's a mess.

      For teaching purposes 3.x is even better, since you have a proper distinction between binary data and text, rather than the mushy 2.x situation where str is sometimes binary data and sometimes handicapped text, while unicode is always text, and sometimes interoperates with str, while at other times it explodes. Teaching languages should be consistent, and 3.x is simply more consistent than 2.x (largely because of cleanup decisions like this).

      --
      $_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
    3. Re:Which raises the critical question: by Roger+W+Moore · · Score: 5, Funny

      Wow - I never knew you could tell a real programmer by their choice of bathroom cleaner.

    4. Re:Which raises the critical question: by number6x · · Score: 3, Funny

      vim! You are a reformed apostate!

      How dare you split from the true path of vi? You might as well join be working for the forces of E.

  4. The Future's So Bright by Art3x · · Score: 4, Funny

    I can't wait for this generation to saturate the industry. Fewer bugs, better features, from less nonsense to code programs with. They might even be better as people, with clearer heads. Python might even help you think more clearly.

    1. Re:The Future's So Bright by X0563511 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That's not how it works. Bad programmers are bad programmers - it doesn't matter what language they touch.

      --
      For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
    2. Re:The Future's So Bright by Vellmont · · Score: 2

      Bad developers are bad no matter what. But good developers make less mistakes in a language where there's less freedom and ease to make mistakes. The recent openSSL bug is a good example. The person who made the mistake isn't a bad programmer, but he did make a dumb mistake. Something that wouldn't have even been possible in an intepreted language.

      Tools DO make a difference. They can very easily save you from yourself and not allow you to do things that you really shouldn't be doing.

      --
      AccountKiller
    3. Re:The Future's So Bright by hondo77 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      But good developers make less mistakes in a language where there's less freedom...

      Some of us like having the training wheels off our bikes.

      --
      I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
    4. Re:The Future's So Bright by cecom · · Score: 2

      Absolutely! OpenSSL should have been written in Python. In fact I am starting a new fork of OpenSSL called PythonSSL - we will be rewriting the codebase in Python to finally improve the performance and get rid of the horrible looseness of the abomination called "static typing" and declaring your variables, replacing it with dynamic typing where bugs are impossible.

    5. Re:The Future's So Bright by jbolden · · Score: 2

      What are you talking about? Interpreted languages let you reuse data structures for performance. What he did was a performance hack. If anything in languages where getting performance is more difficult we'd expect more, more complex and more subtle bugs like the SSL one.

  5. "Top Learning Language" ...OR... by tlambert · · Score: 4, Interesting

    "Top Learning Language" ...OR... "Top Teaching Language"?

    Do we have some great metrics as to how well people taught in Python actually *learn*? You know, for things like memory allocation, pointers, and so on?

    1. Re:"Top Learning Language" ...OR... by pieisgood · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I think they're going for teaching conditionals, loops, classes, functions and structure. You don't need to teach them about memory allocation, pointers and memory alignment in an introductory class. You can save that for an asm and C course. Or better yet, a memory class (which I've not seen).

      --
      Eat sleep die
    2. Re:"Top Learning Language" ...OR... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      Funny you should mention a memory class. I'm the Computer Science department head at my university.

      I was going to introduce a memory class last semester, but I forgot.

    3. Re:"Top Learning Language" ...OR... by supton · · Score: 2

      Here you go:


      {
              1: fn1(),
              2: fn2(),
              3: deploy_attack_kittens()
      }[input]()

      Complaining about a switch statement missing in Python is like complaining that Superman doesn't have a faster airplane.

  6. Python for learning? Good choice. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Python is an awesome language for learning - I'd vote for any language that allows interactive code debugging and experimentation. I see Python used everywhere these days so it's even useful as industry experience.

    I'm a C++ programmer by trade but there's no way I'd wish that language on a student. It's a hellish nightmare clusterfuck language that doesn't know what problem it's trying to solve anymore. Java is loosely based on C++ so it inherits a lot of the problems. I only wish Python would allow stricter interface constructs...

    1. Re:Python for learning? Good choice. by vux984 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I'm a C++ programmer by trade but there's no way I'd wish that language on a student

      Agreed. Its not a learning language.

      I only wish Python would allow stricter interface constructs...

      I only wish python didn't have semantic whitespace. That's it. Otherwise i like it just fine.

      I want the compiler/IDE/whatever to pretty-print and reformat my code to reflect program semantics, not have me spend my time formatting it to DEFINE program semantics.

      A programming language that can have its code be destroyed by copy-paste / email / web-forum formatting mangling is simply idiotic.

    2. Re:Python for learning? Good choice. by vux984 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      If you're copy-pasting enough code from web forums

      Ah yes, because teaching yourself from online resources like the web is a bad idea. And one should always retype everything from scratch despite it already being more or less what you want one window over.

      and emails for this to be a problem

      Well, not so much in practice, because it's a waste of time, so we have to diddle around with little attachments etc because trying to put any code in the email body directly is likely to barf on itself.

      It would be nice not to have to though.

      I'd suggest the language is not the only thing that's idiotic.

      Of course you would. Attacking my intelligence is really the only way to defend your fanboi love of phython's, despite its ridiculous semantic whitespace.

      Because defending semantic whitespace on its own merits is hard.

      You know what though, I'd be perfectly happy to use a C++ / C# / Javascript ... IDE that validated formatting to set standard and flagged down anything that wasn't right. So you could look at it and then either fix the code to match how you formatted or (a 1000x more likely) click "automatically reformat" so the formatting matches the code.

      That really gives you the best of both worlds. Assurance that the formatting reflects the semantics (a good thing), without actually defining the semantics with whitespace (the idiotic thing).

    3. Re:Python for learning? Good choice. by dbc · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I only wish python didn't have semantic whitespace. That's it. Otherwise i like it just fine.

      I'll disagree on that. We use white space to communicate our programs' block structure to other humans. Why should we use a different syntax to tell the compiler the same information? Computers should conform to the needs of humans. Full. Stop. Python eliminates that source of bugs and redundancy by having the compiler's view of the significance of what space match a human's view of significance of white space. Please join us in the 21st century. I'm old enough that I did undergrand homeworks with punch cards, and just missed being taught intro to programming using FORTRAN. One thing I've learned over the years is to recognize progress when I see it.

    4. Re:Python for learning? Good choice. by Darinbob · · Score: 3, Insightful

      We taught C++ to a lot of students, and a lot of them learned it very well and were able to move on to other languages easily enough. Although I think a problem is that today's students aren't as nerdy as they used to be, they don't want to learn about computers and programming and everything related, from assembler and transistors up to lisp and databases, but instead just want to get their 9 to 5 job in whatever field seems to pay the most for the least effort.

  7. Makes sense by pieisgood · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It makes sense. IMHO python removes a lot of the hardware considerations that other languages have. This allows for a focus on the CS material, rather than the engineering material. An advantage over java is that it also supports functional programming. That means that you can teach introductory CS principles in multiple programming styles without having to switch languages. Top it all off with forced indentation (not my favorite thing), which makes beginner code easier to read for instructors and I can see why they did this. Now, later they'll get into asm and C/C++ and memory alignment and paging and all that stuff, but starting out it's nice.

    --
    Eat sleep die
  8. Re:another language shoved down your throat by infogulch · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you didn't want to learn programming languages, why are you taking computer science courses?

    If you're being force-fed anyways, I think python would be much easier to stomach than java for introductory courses. And it would be much easier to grade (if grading consisted of more than "did it output correctly") since introductory students aren't exactly known for their exceptional code organization and formatting skills.

  9. Java or Python by benjfowler · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Lots of people hate the whitespace block-delimiting, but I think Python is *way* better than Java for beginning programming classes.

    I've seen the transition my alma mater made, between Modula-2 and Java. Modula-2 is trivial to pick up for anybody who cut their teeth on Turbo Pascal or Delphi, and "hello world" is quite easy to explain to anybody otherwise unfamiliar with programming. Try repeating that trick with Java's equivalent, and you'll understand why first-year dropout rates skyrocketed upon the switch. Anyway, Python has some nice goodies in the language which lends itself nicely to teaching both OO, and functional styles in the one language.

    I've even seen this in non-IT specialties; at Imperial College here in London, the newbies learn Python (stands to reason, because it's the weapon of choice for many scientists, especially physicists). King's College, OTOH force their first-years to take a unit of Fortran, which actually manages to be about fifty times worse than any other language I've attempted to use.

    The steepness of the learning curve is critical AFAICT -- you don't want to spoon-feed kids, but you don't want to crush them in their first two weeks at college either.

    1. Re:Java or Python by jez9999 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      'Hate' is an understatement. The language's syntax is broken by design. It's a shame another scripting language couldn't have caught on.

      --
      == Jez ==
      Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
    2. Re:Java or Python by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      OP is right. Caring about whitespace is one of the fatal flaws of a programming language.
      Make shares the same flaws, but at least it does something useful.

    3. Re:Java or Python by St.Creed · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Why o why do people drop Pascal? It's still one of the best languages to learn how to program: it's typesafe, compilers plenty, and you can easily create custom types (records). With pointers to records you can make lists, trees etc. - all the constructs basic to the trade.

      --
      Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
    4. Re:Java or Python by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Humans care about whitespaces. That's why there are spaces between words, lines, paragraphs and so on. It is easier to spot a lack of indentation or a line break than, let's say, a missing ; at the end of a line (or an extra one, like for(int i = 0; i n; ++i); { do something }").

      This kinds of things make it easier for beginners, and they should not be a problem to experienced programmers, either.

    5. Re:Java or Python by ShadowRangerRIT · · Score: 2

      The ability to seamlessly use + with mixed text and numeric types in a language without explicitly declared types is usually considered a design flaw, not a positive feature. Perl uses separate operators for strings vs. numbers to avoid ambiguity, while Python and Ruby require explicit type conversions. Java defaults to string concatenation, but Java requires explicit types, so you get a compile time warning if you make a mistake like adding a String and an int and expecting an int. Even PHP, the go to standard for poor language design, which explicitly rejects separating operators for strings and numbers, made a concession for addition vs. concatenation and borrowed Perl's approach of using + for addition and . for concatenation so the operator itself selects the operation.

      The sole exception to this rule that I can think of is JavaScript, where + is type dependent, and it lacks explicitly typed variables. The fact that you're allowed to use addition with silent coercion to String if either operand is a string is explicitly called out as one of the Awful Parts in JavaScript: The Good Parts, which should tell you something. Basically, implicitly typed scripting languages should prohibit implicit type conversions when they use + for both addition and concatenation. The alternative is to behave incorrectly silently.

      As for the ternary operator, really? That's your big gripe? The fact that it reads like an English sentence? Guido hates excessively concise/cryptic punctuation as language elements, so they chose something that reads a bit more like English; if you read it aloud, e.g. "a if a is not None else b", it makes sense. You could also view it as a stealthy attack on the ternary operator, which many people despise as encouraging cryptic code. Either way, we're not talking about something truly ridiculous here; it's a reasonable design decision. This isn't PHP's left associative ternary operator or anything.

      --
      $_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
  10. Re:another language shoved down your throat by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Insightful

    now I guess python will be forced fed to people who don't want it

    That seems like a silly objection. It is not practical for a teacher to let each kid choose their own language, nor are the kids knowledgeable enough to choose. I don't see any big organizations pushing Python the way that Sun was hyping Java back in the late 1990s.

    At my kids' school, they start teaching programming in 4th grade, using Scratch, and move to Python in 6th grade. It seems to work well.

  11. Re:another language shoved down your throat by BForrester · · Score: 4, Insightful

    java was only "the most popular" because it was force fed to people who didn't want it.

    I don't think you understand how schools and their curriculae work. Nobody is holding a gun to the collective and independently-operated heads of CS departments to demand which language they use for beginner courses.

    Java was historically chosen because it was a safe option; used widely in industry, decent documentation and tools, it supports good programming practices, and it provides reasonably powerful options while being relatively beginner friendly. Java largely replaced C and C++, which are not beginner friendly.

  12. Re:another language shoved down your throat by kthreadd · · Score: 4, Informative

    Computing science is not about programming, but programming is often used as a tool in computing science and they therefore (rightfully) have you take programming courses before going into the more theoretical material.

  13. Unfortunately by MAXOMENOS · · Score: 2

    That means I have to REALLY step up my Python chops if I want to compete.

    --
    Finding God in a Dog
  14. Pascal by Dan+East · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Wait!!! What happened to Pascal?!?!? On a more serious note, Pascal was the premier teaching language back in the day, but it really wasn't used much in the real world. It was a stepping stone for learning C, which is where the real power was at and what "real" applications were developed in. I believe there is less disconnect today between the popular learning languages and what is actually utilized in the real world.

    --
    Better known as 318230.
    1. Re:Pascal by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Pascal had fucked up string handling, though some dialects partially rectified that.

      Also, back in the golden age of DOS (late 80s to early 90s), [Borland] Pascal was in fact the language in which many "real" applications were developed, as well; even games. Delphi was also pretty popular on Windows in late 90s to early 00s.

  15. Re:pointers by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 4, Informative

    It doesn't have pointers, but it does have references - which are basically pointers without arithmetic. In fact, in Python, everything in a reference (even primitive types like int are reference types). This is sufficient to explain the core notion of indirection, and data structures built on that notion, like linked lists or binary trees.

  16. At least it wasn't Ruby! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    As much as I hate whitespace formatted languages I hate Ruby most of all. The language itself isn't the problem, it's the hipster asshats who promote it. They should all die in a fire. I'm working on master's in CS and we still use Java, C, and C++ so it's going to be a while before any of the decent languages are displaced in academia.

  17. Great, an entire generation that won't... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    be capable of comprehending blocks. Their kind simply doesn't fucking get begin and end even in pseudo code. I've had to fire three Python devs that simply couldn't figure-out how to use {} in JavaScript. It's not that hard, but I think that horrible language spoils them into thinking that whitespace is magical. Of course colleges want to graduate people that can't keep jobs so they get more customers for their masters programs so they love Python. Making sure you graduate people that are unable to find and/or keep jobs is the number one job now of college professors.

    1. Re:Great, an entire generation that won't... by supton · · Score: 4, Interesting

      You attribute the mistakes of idiots to their language of choice? What does that say about your ability to judge the merits of technical people you work with?

  18. Re:Bah humbug. by Rockoon · · Score: 2

    And even most C64 owners dropped it ASAP and went straight for assembly.

    Which only has equivalents to goto and gosub.... you were saying?

    --
    "His name was James Damore."
  19. Re:another language shoved down your throat by MightyMartian · · Score: 2, Informative

    No, it is popular because, despite a good many flaws, it remains the best cross platform solution we have.

    --
    The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
  20. Good idea by Animats · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Python isn't a bad first language. It has all the important advanced concepts - objects, dictionaries, closures, and threads. The syntax is reasonable. Some people are bothered by the forced indentation, but for new programmers, it will seem natural.

    Most of the problems with Python are performance related. They come from obscure features of the language, such as the ability to do "getattr" and "setattr" on almost anything, including objects running in another thread. So everything has to be a dictionary. (This is sometimes called the Guido von Rossum Memorial Boat Anchor.) PyPy is struggling hard to overcome that, with some success. (The optimization approach is "oh, no, program did Obscure Awful Thing which could invalidate running code" - abandon compiled JIT code, shift to backup interpreter, flush JIT code cache, execute Obscure Awful Thing, wait for control to leave area of Obscure Awful Thing while in backup interpreter, rerun JIT compiler, resume running compiled code.)

  21. Re:another language shoved down your throat by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    C is very beginner friendly in my opinion. It was my first non-BASIC language. Learning C you learn how those bits and bytes work and how shit gets done. The paradigm is old but not obsolete.

    But yes, Python is a great choice. My only gripe is the use of indentation instead of curly brackets to mark blocks.

  22. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  23. Re:MATLAB! WTF!?!?? by random+coward · · Score: 2

    Digging further than the fine article to the blog that it was based on. It appears that the methodology of the study is wrong for what it purports. There were multiple languages and courses from each school; It speaks as if this is the intro for CSC majors, and then adds CSC courses that wont go towards a CSC degree; I.E. programming for engineers with matlab at Georgia Tech for example.

  24. What happened to Scheme? by damn_registrars · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The overwhelming majority of CSci graduates that I have known started undergrad by learning Scheme. IIRC that language was actually built for the purpose of teaching the fundamentals of programming. Why was it replaced (beyond the fact that hardly anyone in the real world uses it)?

    --
    Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
    1. Re:What happened to Scheme? by neminem · · Score: 2

      Because it's a *terrible* language for learning the fundamentals of programming? It's a pretty good language for learning the fundamentals of *programming languages*, as in a PLs class, and a pretty good language for learning how to think in functional language ways, but really, I can't imagine anyone thinking starting first-time programmers in a purely functional language would be a good idea?

      Which is not to say it hasn't been done, just that it's crazy - the college I went to taught their intro course in Java when I took it, later experimented with Scheme for a year or two, and I believe use python now, because that actually makes sense.

    2. Re:What happened to Scheme? by quietwalker · · Score: 2

      Scheme was developed by CS professors for other CS professors. It was not made for students, regardless of what the purple wizard book claims. It was written by CS theorists who were very good at CS, and very bad at teaching.

      Scheme programs were neither easy nor obvious to read or comprehend. It's simplified syntax results in the need for overly complex machinations to produce anything but the most trivial of operations - writing an algorithm that's gone 18 or 20 indentation layers deep is fairly standard with nested scoping blocks to manipulate multiple variables. Ever try to figure out where you're missing a closing paren in 5 pages of Scheme code?

      Then we get into common data structures like actual arrays and hashmaps, or even the ability to realistically define our own types. Numbers are screwy too.

      Slap all this together with a complete lack of object oriented programing and the final and perhaps most severe obstacle; as a functional language, new students must first learn to think along a different paradigm, one opposed to how they had been thinking their whole life, before they can begin to comprehend the basic concepts they're supposed to be learning, and you've got possibly one of the worst languages if your intent is to teach.

      Now, I'm not a big fan of Python, but let's face it, it's so many miles above Scheme when it comes to ease of learning and demonstrating CS concepts that it's barely worth noting Scheme even exists.

    3. Re:What happened to Scheme? by Darinbob · · Score: 2

      I think it was a great idea. This was taught at MIT by the way, not DeVry or IIT Tech or University of Phoenix. MIT is not in the business of churning out code monkeys, so their "computer science" curriculum really was about computer science.

    4. Re:What happened to Scheme? by Darinbob · · Score: 2

      new students must first learn to think along a different paradigm, one opposed to how they had been thinking their whole life,

      I think this is by far the most important things that students need to do. And they need to do this early on in their education, not just as some optional upper division elective.

      I mean if learning to think in a university is inappropriate, then where is it appropriate? Especially when the university in question is MIT of all places.

  25. I was introduced to Python first by goltzc · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Back in 2001 I was attending Minnesota State University Mankato. The CS program there did all of the introductory programming courses in Python. A year or two prior to my enrollment all the intro classes were taught in Java. The profs found that students would get hung up on java syntax when their goal was to teach them basic programming concepts so they switched to Python. Courses in Python only lasted for a couple semesters. After that the rest of the curriculum was primarily taught in Java. I think that Python accomplished the CS department's goal quite well.

    --
    Our bugs are smarter than your test scripts.
  26. Re:another language shoved down your throat by ggpauly · · Score: 3, Informative

    You are far from alone in misunderstanding Javascript.

    --
    Verbum caro factum est
  27. Re:Bah humbug. by dargaud · · Score: 2

    Or the much better programming construct 'comefrom'...

    --
    Non-Linux Penguins ?
  28. Python is good but insufficient by MetalOne · · Score: 2

    Python has a number of nice features for the beginner programmer.
    1) It is easy to learn
    2) It has a REPL.
    3) It has a large standard library, and most things things in the library are easy to use.
    The library is not super abstracted and overly engineered like so many other tools.
    4) It has a large universe of third party libraries that are useful and easy to install.
    There are bindings to many C/C++ and Fortran libraries. Things like numpy, scipy, and matplotlib.
    5) The language and its libraries work on Windows/Linux/Mac.
    6) The language is good at allowing one to focus on the problem at hand without worrying so much about minutiae of the language.
    7) It supports imperative and object-oriented programming and has some support for functional style programming with map, filter, lambdas and list comprehensions. The functional programming support is on the weak side, but at least there is something.

    The language also has some down sides.
    1) Python hides low level details from the programmer. As a student learning about programming, ones needs to understand this stuff. Thus 'C' should also be taught.
    2) It has been my experience that dynamic typing is useful for relativity small single person tasks. Somewhere around 30,000 lines, one begins to wish for static type checking. However, one needs a good type system. The rise of generics has greatly improved modern statically typed languages.

    After reading "Learn You a Haskell For Great Good", I think all programmers should learn Haskell.
    It is not really just about learning Haskell either, but understanding the power of function abstraction, combinators, referential integrity, organizing data, and managing side effects.

  29. Re:another language shoved down your throat by toejam13 · · Score: 2

    Java is also nice in that it was part of the C syntax family. If you know Java, it is trivial to switch to C# and moderately easy to switch to C++. C is different enough to cause grief, but people do catch on to functional languages and memory pointers.

    I learned Visual BASIC during an early CS class. Wasn't really able to make much from that and apply it towards other languages. Also learned Perl during an early CS class. It was so alien from other C syntax languages (and most other languages in general) that I also couldn't apply it toward other languages. They were interesting languages to learn and I did pick up some knowledge regarding general programming, but I think I gained a lot less than had Java been one of my first CS course languages.

  30. Re:another language shoved down your throat by tomhath · · Score: 2, Insightful

    My only gripe is the use of indentation instead of curly brackets to mark blocks

    I'll never understand that criticism. Don't you indent your code? Have you ever been fooled by incorrect indentation that didn't compile the way it looked? Brackets, begin..end, and semicolons are crutches for compiler writers not programmers.

  31. Re:another language shoved down your throat by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Yeah, because the concepts of C# cannot be aplied to any other language like Java or Python.

  32. Re:another language shoved down your throat by raddan · · Score: 2

    Oh, right, I thought that JavaScript sucked because I was under the impression that it was dynamically typed, allowed monkey-patching, had a lame set of numeric types, poor support for sequential I/O, etc., etc., etc. Oh, wait... those things are true? But Douglas Crockford says it's Lisp-y, so that gives us license to sweep all those problems under the rug.

  33. Re:another language shoved down your throat by Ateocinico · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And for that reason python is good for a first course, as it forces the students to indent. I am tired of lazy students that don't indent, and then complain why their code doesn't seem to follow the intended flow. It is hard to teach good habits and practices. And any help, specially from the programming languages, is welcome.

  34. Re:another language shoved down your throat by MightyMartian · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That's rubbish. Most of the major platforms have had Java ported to them. Including various obscure systems is ludicrous. If I want a program that I'm almost guaranteed will run without recompile on Linux, Windows, BSD and even many mainframes, then Java remains the best solution. I'm not saying, from a programming perspective, that it's all that great, but from a platform neutral perspective for most of the systems that a programmer will encounter, it remains the best.

    Have fun running an x86-64 Linux binary natively on a Windows 8 machine. I can. however, write a Java program that I can almost guarantee will in fact run on x64 Linux or Windows.

    --
    The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
  35. Re:another language shoved down your throat by Xtifr · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Have you ever been fooled by incorrect indentation that didn't compile the way it looked?

    Nope. My editor takes care of indentation for me, in every common language except Python, and when I have to deal with a batch of code written by someone else, I run it through indent(1) first. So, in fact, it's just the opposite: when the indentation doesn't match what I expect, I know there's an actual problem in the code!

    With Python, on the other hand, I'm actually more likely to have an error in the indenting, because there's no easy way to see how many blocks I'm terminating when I outdent by an arbitrary amount. Which is a real PITA when you're refactoring.

    Of course, things may be different if you're using crappy tools. But professionals shouldn't be using crappy tools.

    Brackets, begin..end, and semicolons are crutches for compiler writers not programmers.

    No, they're tools to make my job easier. Whatever the historical reason for them may be, they benefit the programmer! They make me more productive.

    Now, I'll grant that Python is a remarkably good language despite its horrible flaw of relying on indentation. And many of its good features also make me more productive. But that doesn't mean that relying on the indentation isn't a horrible flaw.

  36. Re:Python - The Pascal of the 21st Century by Darinbob · · Score: 2

    Pascal, named after one of the great thinkers of his era.
    Python, named after people with silly walks.

  37. Transitioning to "real" programs by Stuntmonkey · · Score: 2

    Python lets you dive in quickly, and it has two properties I like in a first language: It encourages good practices, and it's in the C-derived language group so what you learn transfers easily.

    The only thing you lose with Python is some of Java's ability to do "real" programming directly. A kid can use Java to do Minecraft modding, and a college student can write Android apps. There aren't so many direct uses of Python. (Yes there are a lot of real-world uses for Python, but not for writing user-level apps.)

  38. My biases, let me show you them by radarskiy · · Score: 2

    My recommendation for an initial language has long been Pascal. Technically, it has nearly all of the big concepts that you'd want to demonstrate in a computing language. Practically, it is sufficiently annoying that the student will be receptive to the idea that the language of a program is a design choice rather than getting stuck on the first thing they learned.

  39. Re:another language shoved down your throat by gbjbaanb · · Score: 2

    what do you mean, picking up steam - Enterprise (those who are Windows shops of course) use C# extensively.

    However - think of it like this. Ten years ago, you'd be the one saying Visual Basic is the most widely used language in enterprise, so we should be teaching kids that. And today, those kids would be coming out of college knowing all about VB6 (note, schools don't change curriculums overnight, it takes a long time for them to realise, and even longer to implement change - Java was popular in 1996 which is when it started to gain traction in university departments).

    So, I hope this shows you the fallacy of teaching using "what enterprise wants now". You need to teach what will stand the kids in good stead for the future, that teaches them fundamental programming concepts that they can use their knowledge to apply to other languages. Personally I think they should teach a language that no-one uses in industry. Pascal (or Oberon) or something dedicated for teaching.

    Oh, and that only applies to Windows shops, non-windows people don't use C#.