Re: university studies?

[Matthew Gardiner]

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Original Message <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

On 8/3/01, 6:23:28 AM, Alan Cox <[e-mail]> wrote regarding 
Re: university studies?:

> > On Thu, Aug 02, 2001 at 08:24:45AM +0100, Riley Williams wrote:
> > > One thing I will add, from long experience: If you learned BASIC
> > > first, then learn Pascal BEFORE you try to learn C or C++ as you'll
> > > come out a much better programmer than trying to learn C or C++
> > > directly after BASIC.
> >
> > This makes me a little bit nervous...  I used to program a fair bit in 
BASI=
> > C ((Q|GW)BASIC mostly), and started learning C++ after that.  Could you 
ela=
> > borate a bit on the reasons?

> pascal is a language that teaches you structured programming by making it
> excruciatingly painful to write anything else. You can write basic in C 
and
> sometimes people going from one language to the other basically do that.

> If you have few classes and a lot of 5000 line subroutines then worry, 
but
> there is no reason to assume that every ex basic programmer isnt going to
> pick up C++ and good software design practices just because they once
> wrote basic

Hmm, my first programming experience was using BBC Basic, then I moved to 
COBOL, AMOS and now I am learning Java, which should be a interesting 
eXPerience.

Just a side issue, has any one noticed the decline in the quality of IT 
products over the last 15-20 years? Or is it just me?

Matthew Gardiner

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