Re: Replacing Delphi developers

From: J French (erewhon_at_nowhere.com)
Date: 12/03/03 

Date: Wed, 3 Dec 2003 21:00:43 +0000 (UTC)

On Wed, 3 Dec 2003 15:06:50 -0500, "Bruce Roberts"
<ber@bounceitattcanada.xnet> wrote:

<snip>

>Wrong question. The choice of first language is critical to the development
>of a programmer. It is the foundation upon which their programming knowledge
>will rest. What is important is not the language itself, but its ability to
>let the student easily and without much pain explore various programming
>concepts. It must also help the student develop good programming habits
>because these habits will likely stay with them for the rest of their life.

True - but one learns from mistakes

>
>Any language, be it natural or constructed, imposes a cultural context on
>its user. In the case of programming languages one of the things they tend
>to do is push users towards certain types of solutions. For instance, those
>who work in BASIC tend to ignore recursive solutions simply because the
>language doesn't make them easy to implement.

Eh, recursion in MS BASICs has been dead easy since ... about 1984
- and was no problem for earlier non-MS variants

>As others have said, the really important thing when learning to program is
>not the language. What is important is how one approaches problem solving
>and the types of algorithms one can use to achieve desired outcomes.

Agreed

>A good programmer will be able to learn other programming languages so one
>shouldn't choose a first language because it offers more employment
>opportunity. I think this is especially so in the case of youth who are
>learning because they are interested, not because they need a job.

Yup - results, rather than trip wires

>Delphi, like its ancestor Pascal, is IMO a very good first language. But
>that is no real surprise, Pascal was designed as a pedagogical language.
>There is a wealth of material that teaches programming concepts using Pascal
>and most of it can be used with Delphi.

IMO Delphi is not a good language to start with
- Pascal perhaps, but I'm not that sure
- structure is something that (IMO) one should *learn* to see as a
friend - a bit like Grammar when speaking or writing

<snip>

The first thing is to find out whether the kid is a 'natural'
programmer
- whether the machine can warp his mind, so he thinks like a machine

If you can't switch into 'machine mode' then forget coding

IMO Coders are rather like accountants - and that is not perjoritive.

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