🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <244@sierra.stanford.edu> siegman@sierra.UUCP (Anthony E. Siegman) writes:
>From <14501@bfmny0.UUCP> tneff@bfmny0.UUCP:
>
>> ...like line numbers in BASIC...
>
>I already knew that most of the computer types who denigrate BASIC as
>a programming language haven't in fact looked at a modern BASIC for
>years, if not decades; but it's interesting to see it so clearly
>verified ...

...blah, blah -- total strawman.  Give us a break.  The un-contexted
quote of mine above said that the key was LEAVING OUT unhelpful concepts,
like line numbers in BASIC.  Everyone reading here ought to be aware of
recent "advanced" BASICs, and to imply otherwise is offensive.  The
point was the line number concept, not the choice of language.

Criminey!  How about a topic on which MANNERS to teach first?  :-)

>The problem -- or the fact -- however is that BASIC IS AND WILL REMAIN
>BY FAR THE BEST CURRENTLY AVAILABLE GENERAL-PURPOSE LANGUAGE TO BE
>LEARNED AND USED BY ORDINARY WORKING ENGINEERS AND SCIENTISTS WHO WANT
>TO GET REAL WORK -- EVEN RATHER SIZABLE COMPUTATIONS -- DONE ON THEIR
>DESKTOP COMPUTERS.  If BASIC is supplanted by anything else for those
>sorts of users in the future, it won't be by Pascal, or Scheme, or C,
>or Modula, or anything similar, it will be Mathematica.

Good heavens.

Read the want ads.  (Do they read the want ads at Stanford? ;-) )
Look at the experience required for various programming positions.
A requirement for BASIC is rare as hens' teeth.  Mostly they want
FORTRAN and SPSS and COBOL and 3270 and various other real-world
things.

The original question was what language to teach first, and my answer
was that it depends on what you want to accomplish.  BASIC is fun
for teaching you that the computer does what you tell it to.  It's a
little lax in that it does too much FOR you, and later versions are
no better in that respect.

-- 
"We walked on the moon --	((	Tom Neff
	you be polite"		 )) 	tneff@bfmny0.UU.NET