Re: Pascal or C as a first lang

[news!agphx.agcs.com!not-for-mail@uunet.uu.net (Tim Barrios)]

In article <9309081805.AA27680@ajpo.sei.cmu.edu> JD3GTRCW.TRANSCOM@transcom.saf
b.af.mil (CONROY WILLIAM F) writes:
>
>In article <1993Sep08.003727.36807@source.asset.com> 
>tannend@source.asset.com (David Tannen) writes:
>
>   Since this thread won't go away, I thought I would throw
>   out some information from a recent Dr. Dobbs Journal (DDJ#203).
>   [ good article text removed ]
>
>I hate to offend the masters, but I have to wonder what world they are
>living in. Ada? Who uses Ada? The question of which language is better
>for programming in is not really as important as which language is
>more commonly used. No college grad is going to get a job programming
>in Ada (or at least very few are). But C is everywhere.

Employers hiring people based on language experience alone (or any other
N-letter words on a resume) aren't worth working for.  It comes down
to, are they hiring programmers or software engineers.  If they want
people who engineer software, all they should care about is that they
can abstract ideas into a logical order that can be implemented in
some programming language.  As most people know, once you've used
a few languages, learning a new one isn't a real big deal; learning
a new development paradigm is a lot harder (and more important).

The first language(s) people learn do tend to influence their
future so I guess it would be important to learn one that is better
at abstracting ideas (Pascal, Ada, C++, etc.).  Pascal is
excellent at teaching fundamentals of types which later can be
expanded upon to learn OO-stuff.

> Furthermore,
>who has access to an Ada compiler? You can get free C compilers (or
>damn cheap ones) for any machine. So which is going to be more useful
>to a college student? Which is going to be more useful to someone
>looking for a job? Obviously C!

You get what you pay for?  (-:

I guess teaching C is like teaching assembly language.  It lets
the students see how bad things could be if we didn't have higher
level languages.
-- 
Tim Barrios, AG Communication Systems, Phoenix, AZ
Internet: barriost@agcs.com
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