The answer is "none of the above" for a high school CS class. The reason is that the computer science advanced placement exam is in Java. Until that changes (and until college-level CS stops using Java), you should be learning Java.
Ask HN: Help me convince a teacher we should learn Python (vs VB.net)
21–30 of 80 posts
Re: Ask HN: Help me convince a teacher we should learn Python (vs VB.net)
#22You and the others should just get together and learn Python. No need to have a dependency on your HS class.
Exactly. It's not like you can only learn one language in your life, learning them both will give you a different outlook.
Re: Ask HN: Help me convince a teacher we should learn Python (vs VB.net)
#23You won't like the answer but don't convince, VB.NET is much easier to learn your younger crowd, .NET has more job opportunities and switching to F#, C# from VB.NET is much easier.
Re: Ask HN: Help me convince a teacher we should learn Python (vs VB.net)
#24I came here to see a list of why Python is a good choice and instead the answers surprised me in a good way. Indeed it's not about the language - it's about programming. And although Python is a great language you should keep your options open and learn other tools as well.
After you LPTHW - on your own - you'll have a perspective on both languages. You are not a "hammer carpenter".
Re: Ask HN: Help me convince a teacher we should learn Python (vs VB.net)
#25One thing that you guys are forgetting is that Python is completely portable while VB.net requires Mono at the least on non-Windows systems. In a learning environment I think this is more than trivial.
Re: Ask HN: Help me convince a teacher we should learn Python (vs VB.net)
#26To be honest I think VB.Net is a decent choice for a high school level course. It's an approachable modern language backed by a huge framework with easy access to web, Windows and console programming. The IDE is free and relatively user friendly for someone familiar with Windows, which is much more likely than anything else. Don't underestimate VB.Net. It has a terrible history but most of that ended with VB6. Anothe…
I don't mean this as flamebait at all.. Really. I very much respect the .NET platform... but honestly, something really bothers me about the idea of teaching a proprietary language & platform in public schools when there are sooo many amazing open source options available..
Re: Ask HN: Help me convince a teacher we should learn Python (vs VB.net)
#27I don't think Python is a good idea for a high-school class (where a big bunch of the people don't really care about programming anyways). Hell anyone that already knows a bit of programming will be completely thrown off his chair by the whitespace constraints, while new ones will probably have an awful time trying to debug anything. Python is a great language and it certainly is 'easy' in contrast to a bunch of othe…
I'd argue that Ruby is a bit harder to learn, specially for someone with no background in programming.
While Python tends towards clarity and predictability, Ruby tends more toward conciseness and power. That means some things are not as straightforward to figure out.
Re: Ask HN: Help me convince a teacher we should learn Python (vs VB.net)
#28It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration. - Edsger Dijkstra
I taught myself programming in QBASIC in third grade (gasp, 20 years ago) and my favorite languages now are ocaml and haskell. Doing ruby, python, java, and c#/vb.net at work, all production code. It's the concepts, not the language. ;)
Re: Ask HN: Help me convince a teacher we should learn Python (vs VB.net)
#29There are quite a few things you need to learn to be able to program well. One of the easy ones is syntax, which is what you have to learn to go from one language to another, in addition to the names of variables/functions.
What is much harder to learn, and is largely language independent is: 1) Problem solving - the ability to break problems down into simple task that then can be trivially solved. 2) Data structures - programs are unless unless they have data to work with. Knowing how to best represent it is vital, do you use an array, linked list, tree etc. 3) Algorithms - known ways of operating on data to produce some out come. Everything from using a loop to add numbers, to sorting lists, or adding a node to a red-black tree. 4) Design Patterns - know ways to structure code, in a tried and tested fashion. 5) Architecture and Interface design - how to structure your project as a whole (what goes where) and how to set how one portion interacts with all the others.
Along with many other things. Point being the first language you learn matters little, if you learn to program that cross any language barrier. I have not touched the first language I learned for almost a year, but have learned 2 others in that time.
Having said all that, I am most at home in Python because there I know many of the language specific features.
Re: Ask HN: Help me convince a teacher we should learn Python (vs VB.net)
#30You and the others should just get together and learn Python. No need to have a dependency on your HS class.
Exactly. It's not like you can only learn one language in your life, learning them both will give you a different outlook.
To the OP, if you want a career in coding, get used to learning.
This year I've got node.js, rails 3, html 5, mongo db down pat, all in my own time. Its a fair bet that 90% of HN readers have done the same amount and way more.
Languages and frameworks are not important. Communication, problem solving and productivity skills are important.
Plus, learning more stuff = more fun.