🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <787@trwcsed.trwrb.UUCP> arenberg@trwcsed.UUCP (Jeff Arenberg) writes:
>There are a lot of good computer languages available (C, Fortran, Pascal,
>Algol and many more) and anyone who is serious about programming should be
>able to work in any of them.  Regretably, most engineers, moreover most
>of the people writing any kind of software, are not serious programmers.

Algol is readily available?? :-)   I feel that there is a distinction
between able to write code in a given language and *programming* in a given
language.  For example:  when a Pascal programmer first learns C, he/she
tends to write C code that looks like Pascal (some even go to the extreme
of doing #define BEGIN {, etc.).  Each different language has a paradigm
that goes with it, and in order to be a good *programmer* (vs. coder) in a
given language one must also use the paradigm.

Unfortunately, it is a lot harder to remember the paradigm than the syntax
of a language (and unless you look at some good existing code, you
probably won't learn the paradigm).  Just translating FORTRAN into C is not
good enough.

>I think the only way to rectify this unfortunate situation, is to require
>that computer language classes teach more the one at a time.  Say, showing
>examples of code in atleast three different languages for every problem.
>I seriously doubt this will every happen, but I can always hope.

The languages you mentioned are not all that different; they are all von
Neumann type languages.  By programming in, say C, FORTRAN, and Pascal you
really don't learn new ways of approaching a problem.  Using C, LISP, and
Smalltalk for the same problem might be a better use of time.
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