11–20 of 29 posts
...still better then my "getting raped on your first date" type of intro to programming: starting with C on windows before I knew what a "function" was, and being exposed to the win32 api just after learning to write a for loop and before I understood what a pointer really was :) ...and a seep of Perl after all of this to sooth me up ;) ...things seem much easier if your first experience is "hardcore" ...I guess expo…
...still better then my "getting raped on your first date" type of intro to programming: starting with C on windows before I knew what a "function" was, and being exposed to the win32 api just after learning to write a for loop and before I understood what a pointer really was :) ...and a seep of Perl after all of this to sooth me up ;) ...things seem much easier if your first experience is "hardcore" ...I guess expo…
...still better then my "getting raped on your first date" type of intro to programming: starting with C on windows before I knew what a "function" was, and being exposed to the win32 api just after learning to write a for loop and before I understood what a pointer really was :) ...and a seep of Perl after all of this to sooth me up ;) ...things seem much easier if your first experience is "hardcore" ...I guess expo…
I use standardized terminology for each language feature and explain how languages are optimized for certain kinds of tasks but often have essentially the same features.
It makes the learner start with the question of "how does the syntax work for language feature x?" rather than asking "what do I type to get the computer to do x".
I think the cross language approach is generally what LPTHW tries to do but it uses python and English.
I'd have to wonder if this is essentially that you learn to think then more about function than syntax for getting things done. Whereas if you just learn one language, you've learned perhaps how to do something- not what it really means to do that, or even have that functionality. In learning to think about a problem multiple ways- you really strengthen your knowledge of why over just how.
At my school, they downplayed specific languages entirely and I think it was very beneficial. We were expected to learn the basics of a language for a class in the first week, whether it be Java or Python or whatever else. Obviously details would always come up later on, but the attitude was always "don't worry about the language, you can learn it as you go, worry about the concepts" and in that mindset, I definitely think the learning was more effective.
I think it's kind of like science class: seeing two different models, and their flaws, helps you understand the phenomena being modeled in a much stronger manner.
Awesome teacher, though.