31–40 of 286 posts
The biggest problem with the first language is that a student has nothing to compare it to, and so naturally comes away thinking that the design decisions in that language are a reflection of some deep underlying truth, that this language is The Way Things Should Be Done rather than a product of its time and particular goals of its designers. When I was a wee coder I thought BASIC was the bee's knees. I don't think t…
It probably does, but for a long time, it was hard to tell exactly why. Now, however...ha, just kidding. It's still the same.
IMO it is more important to try and find out if programming is even something they REALLY want to do.
The language maybe better selected for what they might want to ....do.
My first language was C, in a classroom where someone read from the book and then you were on your own.
I dropped out of school (for other reasons) and 20 years later I got back into programming via web development.
I wish I had a different experience in school.
If a student has trouble transferring their knowledge of programming fundamentals from one language to another, it seems far more likely they didn't really understand them to begin with, which is a failure of teaching and testing, not some sort of 'limitation' in the student.
I'm not sure "do SICP exercises in scheme having learned Python/C++" is really about transferring programming fundamentals. The SICP exercises seemed really geared towards a small lisp.
If a student has trouble transferring their knowledge of programming fundamentals from one language to another, it seems far more likely they didn't really understand them to begin with, which is a failure of teaching and testing, not some sort of 'limitation' in the student.
> If a student has trouble transferring their knowledge of programming fundamentals “Programming fundamentals” isn’t the same from language to language. It’s inconceivable that a student who learned to program with python would develop the same type of fundamental understanding as a student who used C (to develop an understanding of memory-level APIs) or Haskell (to develop an understanding of type and semantic theor…
I learned to program as a child (I taught myself, for fun!) but I didn't learn much computer science until well into adulthood.
My story: I have been programming since I was a little kid, having used mostly stuff like Logo and BASIC for years; after spending a bunch of time with Visual Basic I kept failing to learn C. In high school I took a course on some slideshow programming system whose name is escaping me right now, and then one on Pascal. OMG Pascal was hard for me: I made flash cards to try to learn the keywords, and I was struggling. There was something concurrent I was doing with simple JavaScript, which seemed to be going OK-ish.
I then started taking a second course in Pascal--an AP class--but by this point it had all clicked: I had been programming at that point--even writing software for local companies sometimes (in Visual Basic)--for like 8 years and I finally got it. The teacher noticed, and since I was only a junior he said I shouldn't bother continuing in Pascal: I'd help him learn C++ and co-teach the class the next year with him, and take the AP test in C++.
That was... over 20 years ago now? I now feel like I can just learn any language almost immediately. I remember being in the audience when Apple announced Swift: I was looking at the slides and thinking "ok, I see what they are doing here: this is like Objective-C crosses with Scala but with some of the syntax of Ruby... I bet I could program in this". I spent the next day playing with it and had already befriended the Swift compiler people as I was finding tons of bugs, and then I gave a talk on Advanced Swift Internals two days later across the street at AltConf.
I personally feel like this kind of mental process is "teachable". I thereby sometimes have gotten to teach a course at UCSB (I have sometimes been hired as a "1/8th lecturer" or something like that to do this) on programming languages, where I try to take students through the breadth and depth of syntax and semantics, rather than just focusing on a couple examples. Sometimes we look at a semantic and how it evolved, sometimes a syntax and how it got reused, and sometimes a use case and how various languages tried to support it. By the end of the course I expect you to "know" none of the languages, but to hopefully be able to quickly use any of them with some examples. The big project for the class is to design and implement your own "esoteric" language.
FWIW, I "thereby" personally am still in camp "it doesn't (exactly) matter"... as long as it inspires the student! Which I actually think is what this author is kind of getting at (and so I actually do agree with them) with that paragraph about "what about a student who X"... a lot of teachers seem to think "learn this toy thing and you will be able to eventually learn anything", but the toy is boring and doesn't do anything the student wants to work on and by the end of the entire experience you are lucky if they did any of the work at all. It is like teaching someone to play some horrible sounding musical instrument using example pieces that the student doesn't enjoy listening to with the goal of establishing enough musical theory and experience that they can learn a second instrument / style some day and eventually get good enough to do what they wanted. It is just unrealistic? I was able to get as good at the languages I was able to largely because they were useful to me... and honestly, that Pascal wasn't was probably part of what made it so hard :/.
I feel I see folks sweat their first language a lot. IMO it is more important to try and find out if programming is even something they REALLY want to do. The language maybe better selected for what they might want to ....do. My first language was C, in a classroom where someone read from the book and then you were on your own. I dropped out of school (for other reasons) and 20 years later I got back into programming…
I came back to C later and enjoyed learning it properly, but it is very much not a gentle introduction into the world of programming for the average person!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or it simply means the student does not have the aptitude for programming. Not everyone does.
But the topic is how their view is shaped by the first language they learn. If they learn C first, will their ability to knowledge transfer into other languages happen differently then if they learned Python first? Concretely, I can't fathom how people learn Rust without learning one of C or C++ first, and I'd think the underpinnings of how you understand code and systems is probably different if you are subconscious…
If a student has trouble transferring their knowledge of programming fundamentals from one language to another, it seems far more likely they didn't really understand them to begin with, which is a failure of teaching and testing, not some sort of 'limitation' in the student.
> If a student has trouble transferring their knowledge of programming fundamentals “Programming fundamentals” isn’t the same from language to language. It’s inconceivable that a student who learned to program with python would develop the same type of fundamental understanding as a student who used C (to develop an understanding of memory-level APIs) or Haskell (to develop an understanding of type and semantic theor…
You should be able to carry very, very basic concepts over to other languages with much less difficulty than learning them the first time. A student sufficiently skilled in Python will be able to make the same intro level programs in C given enough time. Badly? Yes, but they'll function.
Similarly, a watercolor artist won't forget the basics of art when handed a pencil.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If a student has trouble transferring their knowledge of programming fundamentals “Programming fundamentals” isn’t the same from language to language. It’s inconceivable that a student who learned to program with python would develop the same type of fundamental understanding as a student who used C (to develop an understanding of memory-level APIs) or Haskell (to develop an understanding of type and semantic theor…
Most programmers are not computer scientists. Even most people with computer science degrees are not computer scientists at heart, they forced themselves to do the coursework so they could get a job (mostly web, utilizing almost nothing they were taught). I learned to program as a child (I taught myself, for fun!) but I didn't learn much computer science until well into adulthood.