in reply to Writting Perl reserved words in Spanish or other foreign languages

But aren't there some downsides to this approach? Studying examples in books or the Internet or even real-world applciations will be much more difficult and the same can be said for using CPAN modules. And if they wanted to use Perl in the future on a project with others or even just wanted to ask for help they will be at a disadvantage.

I guess the question is if sacrificing the future to teach them fundamentals now really worth it? What will these students be doing once the class is over? Are they mostly Computer Science students? Or is this class one of those one-offs they are forced to take? It seems like the one-offs would beneift from a Spanish version while anyone who will be doing more programming in the future would benefit from learning the real thing.

  • Comment on Re: Writting Perl reserved words in Spanish or other foreign languages

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^2: Writting Perl reserved words in Spanish or other foreign languages
by eric256 (Parson) on Oct 11, 2007 at 23:28 UTC

    It might still be helpfull as an intro. Learn basic programming concepts without having to learn two foriegn languages at once (perl AND english).


    ___________
    Eric Hodges
[reply]
      I know -- it's a really tough call to make and it's really hard to remember back to when the basics seemed so hard.

      I am reminded of my own education where I learned Pascal first and then took C as an elective. I know it's comparing apples to oranges (for the most part) but I feel Pascal was a waste of time.

      C may have been harder to learn (especially if I had started out with it) but at least it was much more useful later on in life (both in later college classes and in the job market). My C (and C++) are very rusty these days but I still reap some benfit when trying to get things to compile. I don't think I have even seen any Pascal since college.

      So I look at this and think to myself -- they will gain some beneift from learning the fundamentals in Spanish Perl but if they learn real Perl then they will also potentially benefit much more later on in life.

[reply]
        Interesting that you think learning Pascal was a waste of time. The research I've read about (sorry, no references) indicates that Pascal is a significantly better teaching language than C. The gist was that programmers who learn Pascal first do better than those who learn C first, as they actually learn some programming principles rather than diving straight into high-level assembler. There may be benefits from your Pascal experience that you don't even realize.

        On the actual topic, it's widespread practice to use English reserved words in nearly all programming languages. The French produced a version of COBOL with French reserved words, but then they have an Academy devoted to the purity of the French language. Any other instances?
[reply]

        Someone learning programming is learning programming, not a programming language. Once you've grasped the concepts of functions, loops, variables, etc., picking up a new language is just so much syntax.* So Pascal was very valuable to you: it taught you the concepts in a simpler way, and when you picked up C you picked it up vastly more easily than you would have otherwise.

        If this were Slashdot, I'd proceed with an excruciatingly in-depth car analogy (probably something to do with a posh chauffeur learning to drive in a beat-up Mini). But it's not, so I'll leave it there. :)

        * Unless it's Haskell, but that's a special case!

[reply]

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom