yeah, that is how i feel about it too.

Coursera offers some classes every once in a while start with a beginner language it will be easier to grasp more advanced concepts and languages later

1) Sorry for the word programmation, I'm french and it does exist, I thought it would translate that way since it is so alike the other word from the same family. The rest of your comment is flaming again. I guess that this behavior of yours has been pointed out in your teaching evaluations when you did gave that class or parts of it in 2006. Nothing coming from you is constructive, all you do is try to destroy and be right at all cost.

2) I said it is better for getting the basics of programming to start with a lower level language (mid lvl not assembly or FORTRAN) so you get to have a glimpse of what is going on below and use less premade functions or components. I don't insist on C++, this was an exemple. I say that starting with a managed language is waste because you start using things you don't even understand and that is how you get to create bad code or end up asking all the time for help on forum for stupid things you should have known.




How do you call the guy insisting on python?

Nobody here's insisting on Python, although as a starting language, it's actually one of the better ones. This is a natural and logical conclusion if you agree with the premise that "simpler language is better because it allows you to focus on learning how to program."

But the premise is what you're disagreeing with here. And you are wrong, plain and simple.

You're arguing that the lower level languages are better, basing this on your overinflated sense of importance of low-level things like memory management. Memory management is really not that important -- you can lead an entirely illustrious programming career without having ever learned C/C++ or memory management, but the same cannot be said if you've never truly learned how to program.

In fact, things like memory management and compiler optimizations are really best categorized as specialty skillsets. They are useful to know at a deeper if you're going to be writing things like middleware, operating systems, or device drivers. You can learn to program in C/C++ (and particularly C++) with a fairly shallow understanding of memory management if you're writing fairly high-level code.

The same cannot be said for higher-level concepts that are not specialized skills, but core/foundational skills/knowledge in software development. This is where the "meat" of a CS/SWE education really lies, and if you fixate on a specific programming language, you will pretty much miss the entire point.



I've laid out perfectly good reasoning, starting from some very baseline axioms and building logical conclusions from there. Labeling arguments as "flaming" doesn't actually make them so, nor does it make you right.

The saddest part in all this is your inability to comprehend what's being said to you and to course-correct your perspective based on what other, more knowledgeable and experienced people are telling you. This shows that you don't even have the capacity to have an open enough mind to learn from your mistakes, which is a pretty bad sign of how you're going to fare down the road. More so given the fact that everyone else on this thread has written something that more or less says you're wrong.

On that note, I'm off. But in the meantime... seriously - you should go back through this thread and read what's been said. There are a lot of things here that you can learn from, if you're willing to look through everything again with an open mind.

This post was edited by irimi on Dec 3 2012 06:50pm

@Fawar

If lower level is good for starting out.... then we should just start everyone in assembly....... of course, we all know this won't work.... they are just going to fail and probably give up before they even get a hello world program working.......
We don't start kids off on unicycles, we start them on a bicycle with training wheels.... and for good reason.... we want them to succeed and accomplish something... then they can move up to harder stuff later.

Python is a nice easy language that someone just starting can get a lot accomplished with, which I think is a great way to learn. But like I said, there are many others that are also good, ruby comes to mind as being especially good for this.

This post was edited by Azrad on Dec 3 2012 07:19pm

I don't know if this as been asked, but a couple important questions to ask yourself...

Why do you want to program?
What do you want to program?

Personally, I like programming for game development.
So, I started by installing UDK and learning Unrealscript
For me this was an excellent starting point.
There are tons of resources, text tutorials, video tutorials, and examples so I was able to 'dive' in pretty face first.

Unrealscript isn't a full fledged programming language, but it is Object Oriented and if you can understand it then picking up another language like C++ or Java shouldn't be too challenging.
Honestly, learning programming concepts and syntax is easy for me.
Learning the libraries and capabilities, and 'best' way to achieve is what's difficult and keeps it interesting

This post was edited by grievance on Dec 3 2012 09:24pm

I started on c++ and I think I am coming along okay!

Then again I think I am just smarter than the avg student in my campus (not trying to be conceited but cmon getting an A is easy if you just do the work)

so if i tell you to not include any headers in your cpp application could you successfully code an application in reasonable time lol. the functions are there to be used so why bash them. just imagine creating a socket application without atoi, htons, and other long/ints to network byte order functions and if you had to convert them all yourself lol. thinking that c++ has less premade functions then any other language though is kind of a funny joke though. *slow claps*