🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <rshapiro-1408950937080001@esb.bbn.com>, rshapiro@bbn.com (R Shapiro) writes:
|>In article <40mqib$msc@wormhole.cognos.com>, douvilld@Cognos.COM (Derek
|>Douville) wrote:
|>>One cannot fully apreciate the advanced organizational features of C++
|>>until they've programmed in C.  
|>
|>And you can't understand the "advanced" features of C until you've
|>manually set bits in hardware with toggle switches, right? Therefore every
|>new programmer should start by programming in machine language -- yeah,
|>that's a *great* way to teach modern principles of programming...

  Going to toggle switches is a little much, but it has been my
experience that programmers who know assembly are much better at
programming in C than those who don't.  I think the same is true of
C and C++ programmers.
  The point is not about teaching modern principles of programming
but about programming itself.  Programming is a skill much like
painting or woodwork.  It may require a heck of a lot more knowledge
to practice the skill of programming than many other things, but in
the end it is a skill that improves with the amount of programming
you do and the size and complexity of the projects you work on.
 Like any skill, thorough knowledge of your tools is necessary; and
C is a large part of C++.  Without the C part of C++, C++ is nothing
but glorified structs.  At the base of things, objects are implemented
with procedural programming--in C.
  Math is taught from the ground up.  I don't hear any math professors
likening the learning of addition and subtraction to flipping toggle
switches and advocating that students start with multi-variable calc-
ulus.  There is nothing wrong with starting with C and then going on
to C++.  This also does not mean that in learning C, you should not be
exposed to object oriented design.



Regards,

LDDenys