Indeed. perhaps because the author is a poet as well? and is really enthusiastic about IF...
another very nice language to introduce beginners some aspects of programming is the macro language used in the popular freeware raytracer POV-Ray to describe scenes. and, likewise to Inform, beginners are actually delighted to learn the language, since the results are very satisfactory...
that would go from the current license costs for StarOffice to zero of OpenOffice, while still remaining mostly compatible with M$Office. besides, i'm pretty sure they're running an obsolete version of StarOffice from 2000...
"a decline in the number of students that want to take our entry level-programming course in Visual Basic."
Thank God! at least it seems there's still hope for mankind...
"the idea of having the introduction course be in PHP"
wouldn't be much better than VB, except it's free.
"or Ruby on Rails;"
isn't a language, but a framework. But Ruby is indeed an excelent language for both teaching and work.
"but are not convinced that they lead well into higher level languages."
sorry? say again?! You won't find many "higher level languages" out there that outbest Ruby or Python... let alone C descendents like Java...
still, my personal recomendation would be Scheme, a Lisp dialect that many north-american Universities teach. It features:
* ease of syntax ( almost none at all ) * a compact standard library ( R5RS ) perfect for teaching how to think algorithmically rather than being trained at a whole framework to pump out web pages. * high level programming at its best with a very flexible and expressive language
Of course, if you are just willing to prepare them for "real life", just go the easy way with java and craploads of libraries to cope with such a poor language. And don't forget a huge bloated IDE to cope with the loads of redundancy such a poor language and its loads of libraries generate.
... but it looks and works damn good! is this really a non-web-standards M$ we're talking about?? I'm guessing they bought some GMail or GMaps engineers...
Probably, a showcase for their recent AJAX solutions they're trying to sell...
At least, it works very fine in Firefox. But I have a gut feeling that once IE7 is past and WVista is everywhere ( along with XAML ), they'll be dumping all this AJAX "crap" and focus again on selling their proprietary views of how you should develop apps...
Firefox is just an application of several interesting technologies the Mozilla Foundation has been proudly implementing for a very long time by now, namely: the Gecko renderer, the XUL presentation system to build GUIs, the XPCOM cross-platform component model and others.
If you want to build applications, use those same as Firefox. It's the same with IE: you don't drop IE as a web viewer control or something into your application, you use the same components from which IE is built.
So, yes, the Mozilla technology is amazing, valuable, reusable and there's plenty of it to build tons of nice apps...
"The client knows whether the field is NULL or not."
the _client_ can be just about anything. and it won't necessarily play by your rules and have javascript enabled. malicious technical users can present you with carefully crafted data that seems validated by your javascript code, even though never going through it...
am i the only one who find widget to be an inappropriate term for those things? applets or desklets should do it... why Apple needed to choose a term so widely used in GUI jargon?
C# is actually another clever way of saying C++: it comes from music notation. C# is the same black key on a piano keyboard as Db. It mean C one half-tone higher...
i liked the name, at least.
But for a real modern OO language, you should try no other than OCaml.
C# is, just like Java, a simplified C++ with half the performance and flexibility. C++ for the brainless, easily replaceable masses if you will...
...that's the true identity of Batman these days. The Ironman, complete with invulnerable eletronic super suit and lots of cash to toast in his obsessive crime prosecution...
I enjoyed Batman best when he was just a tormented man with some cash, cunning and a utility belt. Some rather good detective action rather than Superman-style action...
and it only makes me uneasy to see that the/. crowd didn't give this much of a thought, given the number of replies. Just because IBM is profiting with Linux, doesn't mean they are any way better than M$...
my Duron 850 boots Fedora 1 in about 30 seconds. Granted, it doesn't boot database, web or other servers at startup and doesn't have a bloated JVM installed as well, but still...
It's a friggin Opteron and the substitute for init.d scripts should work faster than that!
Slashdot Mirror
"The Inform Designer's Manual is so excellent"
Indeed. perhaps because the author is a poet as well? and is really enthusiastic about IF...
another very nice language to introduce beginners some aspects of programming is the macro language used in the popular freeware raytracer POV-Ray to describe scenes. and, likewise to Inform, beginners are actually delighted to learn the language, since the results are very satisfactory...
that would go from the current license costs for StarOffice to zero of OpenOffice, while still remaining mostly compatible with M$Office. besides, i'm pretty sure they're running an obsolete version of StarOffice from 2000...
cops definetely don't know math nor IT.
"a decline in the number of students that want to take our entry level-programming course in Visual Basic."
Thank God! at least it seems there's still hope for mankind...
"the idea of having the introduction course be in PHP"
wouldn't be much better than VB, except it's free.
"or Ruby on Rails;"
isn't a language, but a framework. But Ruby is indeed an excelent language for both teaching and work.
"but are not convinced that they lead well into higher level languages."
sorry? say again?! You won't find many "higher level languages" out there that outbest Ruby or Python... let alone C descendents like Java...
still, my personal recomendation would be Scheme, a Lisp dialect that many north-american Universities teach. It features:
* ease of syntax ( almost none at all )
* a compact standard library ( R5RS ) perfect for teaching how to think algorithmically rather than being trained at a whole framework to pump out web pages.
* high level programming at its best with a very flexible and expressive language
Of course, if you are just willing to prepare them for "real life", just go the easy way with java and craploads of libraries to cope with such a poor language. And don't forget a huge bloated IDE to cope with the loads of redundancy such a poor language and its loads of libraries generate.
what a noble and charitable soul. or at least he sounds like it...
actually, KDE and most other free software projects also run on non-Unix-compatible systems, namely Windows.
the source code is available for the exact purpose of allowing you to do anything with it, including porting to other platforms.
how about right after he is bored with his gameboy?
ah, laptops at school! if only i had access to pr0n during my college years...
"Microsoft's best product ever is the Win32 API"
ok, i've had my quota of ROTF for today
let's move on...
little advice: move over from anciente things like the XLib API or Win32 to something more modern, like GTK or Qt, perhaps, and then we talk...
it's true. after all, as everyone knows the TCO of Linux solutions is far higher than M$s, but it's well worth it... ;)
oh, that's weird...
where's the standard xml header? hell, yeah, it was extended by a proprietary mso-application header. just M$ embrace-and-extend style all over...
any sign of a xmlns attribute anywhere? nope, and yet, they use the ns:tagName notation...
stupid.
has M$ at least released the XML Schemas for the formats? If not, forget it: it's just as illegible as binary...
and let's not forget it'll only display correctly inside MSWord itself...
i'd mod you funny if i had any mod points...
10 years in IT is a lot...
somehow, i don't think you use those underwears from the 80's when dating your gf, do you?...
... but it looks and works damn good! is this really a non-web-standards M$ we're talking about?? I'm guessing they bought some GMail or GMaps engineers...
Probably, a showcase for their recent AJAX solutions they're trying to sell...
At least, it works very fine in Firefox. But I have a gut feeling that once IE7 is past and WVista is everywhere ( along with XAML ), they'll be dumping all this AJAX "crap" and focus again on selling their proprietary views of how you should develop apps...
Firefox is just an application of several interesting technologies the Mozilla Foundation has been proudly implementing for a very long time by now, namely: the Gecko renderer, the XUL presentation system to build GUIs, the XPCOM cross-platform component model and others.
If you want to build applications, use those same as Firefox. It's the same with IE: you don't drop IE as a web viewer control or something into your application, you use the same components from which IE is built.
So, yes, the Mozilla technology is amazing, valuable, reusable and there's plenty of it to build tons of nice apps...
Stallman is the landlord...
"The client knows whether the field is NULL or not."
the _client_ can be just about anything. and it won't necessarily play by your rules and have javascript enabled. malicious technical users can present you with carefully crafted data that seems validated by your javascript code, even though never going through it...
am i the only one who find widget to be an inappropriate term for those things? applets or desklets should do it... why Apple needed to choose a term so widely used in GUI jargon?
do users know it means window gadgets?
C# is actually another clever way of saying C++: it comes from music notation. C# is the same black key on a piano keyboard as Db. It mean C one half-tone higher...
i liked the name, at least.
But for a real modern OO language, you should try no other than OCaml.
C# is, just like Java, a simplified C++ with half the performance and flexibility. C++ for the brainless, easily replaceable masses if you will...
open and free ( as in beer ), but with no freedom for developers to modify it to suit their needs and redistribute that.
open sources sure does not mean freedom as the free software movement tries hard.
what has KDE anything to do with Wikipedia?
...that's the true identity of Batman these days. The Ironman, complete with invulnerable eletronic super suit and lots of cash to toast in his obsessive crime prosecution...
I enjoyed Batman best when he was just a tormented man with some cash, cunning and a utility belt. Some rather good detective action rather than Superman-style action...
and it only makes me uneasy to see that the /. crowd didn't give this much of a thought, given the number of replies. Just because IBM is profiting with Linux, doesn't mean they are any way better than M$...
my Duron 850 boots Fedora 1 in about 30 seconds. Granted, it doesn't boot database, web or other servers at startup and doesn't have a bloated JVM installed as well, but still...
It's a friggin Opteron and the substitute for init.d scripts should work faster than that!
to wait 12 months while Longhorn stage1 compile and boot!
you've been watching too much porn.
it's not a stupid piece of metal which makes you cum. it's flesh.
besides, i've know some guy who've grown a cancer because of the piercing in the tongue. your risk...
Some of us do it because we enjoy the way it looks.
Tatooed like a human cartoon? Or showing your pierced tongue at any occasion just to make sure others know you're friggin cool-looking?
bleh!