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Turkey buys Delphi licenses for an estimated one million students

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Re: Turkey buys Delphi licenses for an estimated one million students

#151
post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

QuickBASIC works the same way. Rust doesn't really build its help documentation for "built-in" access in the programming environment (everything is web-based, even "local" docs launch in a web browser) but examples are a first-class feature; they're reused as test cases.

> Rust [...] everything is web-based Correction: Rust's help and documentation is HTML -based, and getting a local, automatically updated copy is trivial. > even "local" docs launch in a web browser Uh, so what? Can you name a better format for programming language documentation that's also ubiquitously supported?

> Can you name a better format for programming language documentation that's also ubiquitously supported?

Info format. It's supported by Emacs, and Emacs is the most ubiquitous of IDE's.

Re: Turkey buys Delphi licenses for an estimated one million students

#152

This reminds me of a few ( I then found out that they were being taught to use Borland Turbo C . I suspect the case for this is similar: Some person who once upon a time learnt to program and then never practiced nor developed their skills somehow got a job teaching programming, and is now trying to apply the ancient tools they were taught somewhere around the time when some fish decided to walk on land because its a…

What does it matter which programming language they learn in high school? It's not supposed to be the language you use for work. It's supposed to teach you to program.

If anything it should be mandatory to learn something else. It might be the only non-work programming language they will ever learn. Cradle to grave Python / Java?

Would Common Lisp / Haskell be considered a bad / good / ancient choice?

Re: Turkey buys Delphi licenses for an estimated one million students

#153
post #82
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> python is probably a more relevant choice. Python doesn't have any standard graphical IDE or even GUI widgets. No modern language can create GUI applications with the ease of use of Delphi, except maybe .NET (which is based on Delphi).

.NET is definitely the easiest possible way to do a widget UI, but it's not based on Delphi in any meaningful sense. Its closest ancestor is Java, via the short lived "J++" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_J%2B%2B (Android later did basically the same thing with Dalvik)

Let’s not forget that the original chief architect of Delphi and the lead architect of C# since its beginnings are the same person so I would dare to say there had ro be some influence sneaking in.

Re: Turkey buys Delphi licenses for an estimated one million students

#154
post #132
post #9

I really don't want to sound cynical about this great initiative(!) but it saddens me that among many open modern languages and tools, they instead opted for Delphi. I cannot think of a single positive reason behind this decision in 2020. All I can think of is that the people that came to this conclusion are the ones who graduated from Computer Science related studies in ~1998-2004~ and immediately got themselves in…

Define modern please. There is not a single thing about ObjectPascal language that relegates it as non-modern. Lack of new jobs - sure but that is a bit different subject.

The licensing model is straight out of the 80s.

Re: Turkey buys Delphi licenses for an estimated one million students

#155
post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Rust [...] everything is web-based Correction: Rust's help and documentation is HTML -based, and getting a local, automatically updated copy is trivial. > even "local" docs launch in a web browser Uh, so what? Can you name a better format for programming language documentation that's also ubiquitously supported?

> Can you name a better format for programming language documentation that's also ubiquitously supported? Info format. It's supported by Emacs, and Emacs is the most ubiquitous of IDE's.

> Emacs is the most ubiquitous of IDE's.

Sorry, have you been in a coma for 30 years?

Re: Turkey buys Delphi licenses for an estimated one million students

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The internet is lousy in Turkey Um, what? I just signed up for fiber in Istanbul, lowest plan, 25mbit, at dirt cheap $11 a month — unmetered. Meanwhile my San Francisco apartment, Comcast charges me $67 a month for a 50mbit capped one. While there is some variance in availability (just like any other country) Turkish infrastructure is generally first-world. It is for political reasons that it gets demoted into the…

Istanbul isn't the whole country and it is a huge place. The sibling comment mentions Antalya, another large city. Both are going to have ok internet. Ergodan has done well to support the rural population where internet service is lousy. And that is only one aspect of having a self contained system. Arguing over internet speeds when it comes to choosing a system for kids to learn programming on was by far weakest arg…

The sibling comment mentioned Anatolia (almost the whole part of Turkey that is on the asian continent), not Antalya, the city.

Re: Turkey buys Delphi licenses for an estimated one million students

#158

This reminds me of a few ( I then found out that they were being taught to use Borland Turbo C . I suspect the case for this is similar: Some person who once upon a time learnt to program and then never practiced nor developed their skills somehow got a job teaching programming, and is now trying to apply the ancient tools they were taught somewhere around the time when some fish decided to walk on land because its a…

What does it matter which programming language they learn in high school? It's not supposed to be the language you use for work. It's supposed to teach you to program. If anything it should be mandatory to learn something else. It might be the only non-work programming language they will ever learn. Cradle to grave Python / Java? Would Common Lisp / Haskell be considered a bad / good / ancient choice?

The student has to learn programming skills that can teach them the fundamentals quickly, ideally be transferable to most fields and hopefully something they can use freely on their own time.

Python is great for this. You can have kids building whatever in class and they can go home and use the same tools and make videogames or visual novels or whatever else strikes their fancy, and when they get hired still use the same tools.

My main issue with haskell is that it's likely not very transferable. That isn't to say you shouldn't be able to use it or teach it - maybe you can teach something unique with it you can't teach with other languages, but that needs a bit of explanation beyond just "well I prefer it".

The education should serve the students, not tickle the fancy of the teacher.

Re: Turkey buys Delphi licenses for an estimated one million students

#159

Professional programmers scoff at "old" languages like this, but they forget what it's like to not know the first thing about programming, or what GCC is, or how it's different from Clang, or if you need to install Linux to use it, or if you're making a huge mistake by using C++ instead of Rust, or if maybe Go is better, or why that one person said something about GraphQL, or if you need to install a virtual env for…

>Delphi just installs with a double-click and you can write code in a box and it runs.

You can do that at https://www.onlinegdb.com/online_c_compiler, but do programmers use that website for professional programming? No, because professional programming is about integration into a system/platform, not about one-size-fits-all sandboxed environments.

Re: Turkey buys Delphi licenses for an estimated one million students

#160
post #148
post #21

I too have a soft spot for Object Pascal but > Getting object-pascal back into universities and education is very important. Not just for Delphi as a product and Embarcadero as a company, but to ensure that the next generation of software developers are given a firm grasp on fundamental programming concepts; concepts that represent the building-blocks that all software rests on; a curriculum that has taken heavy dama…

The move from Pascal to Java made a transition from learning how to program a computer to learning how to build apps using java-like OOP and libraries. Most places where Java is taught don´t teach about computer registers, stack frames, pointers, memory management, etc, and how they work together. Or if they do it they do it superficially.

Last I checked C is still taught in any serious CS curriculum.
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