Re^4: Writting Perl reserved words in Spanish or other foreign languages

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!

Comment on Re^4: Writting Perl reserved words in Spanish or other foreign languages

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Re^5: Writting Perl reserved words in Spanish or other foreign languages by Argel (Prior) on Oct 13, 2007 at 00:40 UTC
Actually, learning programming is both learning programming and learning a programming language. It's really unavoidable. So why should one part of what you are learning be very useful while the other be only moderatly useful? Regarding Pascal, what if I had learned C first and then picked up Pascal? The argument then would be that C was very valuable to me. Granted Pascal was likely easier to learn but maybe it simplified things too much? Maybe if I had learned in C to begin with I would have grasped concepts like pointers and stuff sooner (or better yet if we had started in assembler). There are a lot of variables involved and it is not clear to me that Pascal was really the best choice for Computer Science majors.	[reply]
Re^6: Writting Perl reserved words in Spanish or other foreign languages by djp (Hermit) on Oct 16, 2007 at 00:58 UTC
Well the research shows that if you'd learnt C first then Pascal you would be a poorer programmer than if you learnt them the other way around. That was my point. It's all about having a sound basis - C doesn't provide that because it's a mess.	[reply]