My CS101, looking over the packed room on the first day, told us all sorts of things about CS. That most would end up dropping out, that many people in the room would be happier in another major, very hard work, the major doesn't even have room for an incoming class this size, etc. etc.

One man left.

After two weeks of trying to absorb the fundamentals of programming via Java, though, we lost 15-20 people. I'm thinking he could have skipped the speech and gone right to the Java, more bang for his buck! :)

Seriously, though, I'm sure there were several amongst those who left who would have done fine and been happy, but were intimidated by Java. It has few virtues as a learning language.

In reply to Re^2: Perl as one's first programming language by amarquis
in thread Perl as one's first programming language by amarquis

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