On Sat, Feb 20, 2010 at 4:13 PM, Joshua Zeidner wrote: >  Seems like we have a lot of opinions here.  Here is a paper from ACM > on the use of Python in for teaching programming. > >    http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=114017 sorry wrong link: http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1140123.1140177 -jmz > >  -jmz > > > On Sat, Feb 20, 2010 at 4:01 PM, Austin William Wright > wrote: >> Alan Dayley wrote: >>> Python. >>> >> Absolutely NOT PYTHON. It breaks the first two rules of programming, the >> assignment operator (=) assigns values to a variable, and always ignore >> whitespace. Well my first two rules, at least. Plus it sucks at >> consistent use of object-oriented programming. >> >> If you *really* need a general-purpose programming language, look at >> Ruby, it's slightly more well behaved. Slightly. I would recommend >> Javascript, it's a major programming language, and you can run it in >> your web browser with literally nothing to install. Plus Javascript is >> closely related to XML and HTML, while not programming languages, are >> markup languages (a way of storing data) that is becoming very important >> to know for many things. Though designed for the web, many of these >> things are finding themselves become part of everyday computing, >> especially XML. For these things, http://www.w3schools.com/ is popular. >> >> Any scripting language might be a good start at learning about >> if/then/else logic, but none of these languages are going to teach how >> computers really *process* or *store* information on the inside (how the >> CPU executes the program or how variables are stored in memory), or for >> that matter write an actual interactive computer program, you will need >> a real language like C or C++. After learning something like Javascript >> you will find C surprisingly limited in functionality if you try and do >> things the same way, especially variable-length variables like strings >> and arrays. Keep that fact in the back of your head for when, if, you >> attempt C/C++. >> >> Whatever you do, Google " tutorial" should bring up something good. >> In the way of books, however, you can't miss ones from O'Reilly ( >> http://oreilly.com/ ), they are jade/teal and have a random animal on >> the cover. >> >> Austin Wright. >> --------------------------------------------------- >> PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us >> To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: >> http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss >> > > > > -- > http://home.joshuazeidner.com/ > -- http://home.joshuazeidner.com/ --------------------------------------------------- PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss