That would have been the early 80's. When BASIC was not owned by
Microsoft, when it was spelled BASIC for whatever compiler you used, and it
had line numbers, and GOTOs. I started programming in a gifted program
with a dumb impact printing terminal with an acoustic coupler you stuck a
phone handset into to network over the public switched telephone network
after I got into a gifted student's class in 5th or 6th grade. I didn't
get a CS major in college because you had to travel between central Kansas
liberal arts colleges for classes and I didn't have a car, so I majored in
math instead, and never have broken into the software or IT world, really.
But now I'm getting close.
In those days you started with Logo or Turtle, or maybe BASIC, and then
started seriously studying programming with Pascal, then you learned C and
later complained that they didn't put you on a Unix machine working with C
starting in CS105. We had no idea how awful things were compared to what
would come.
Trent
On Thu, Dec 22, 2022 at 11:51 PM Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss <
plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org> wrote:
> trent shipley via PLUG-discuss said on Thu, 22 Dec 2022 07:26:18 -0700
>
> >Python is a great first language, and there is no shortage of beginning
> >Python books aimed at young beginners. I've never read a juvenalia
> >programming book, except maybe pre-Visual Basic BASIC with the line
> >numbers and goto-s,
>
> In the 21st century, anyone who teaches a child goto-s, or even fails
> to strongly criticize them to the child, should be shot at dawn.
>
> The only tolerable uses for goto are:
>
> 1) Assembly language, but who uses that today? And modern assemblers
> have JSR (Jump to Subroutine) and RET (Return from subroutine), so
> even that is questionable.
>
> 2) Jump to an abort subroutine, but even this is ill advised.
>
> 3) Break out of a multiply nested loop, but it's much better to
> construct each loop to do the right thing.
>
> I haven't used a goto since maybe 1992 (assembler), and I'm proud of
> that.
>
> SteveT
>
> Steve Litt
> Autumn 2022 featured book: Thriving in Tough Times
> http://www.troubleshooters.com/bookstore/thrive.htm
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