[Info-vax] Opportunity for VSI?

[Tim Sneddon]

Bill Gunshannon <bill.gunshannon at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/19/18 9:16 PM, Arne Vajh??j wrote:
>> On 12/19/2018 8:47 PM, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
>>> On 12/19/18 7:38 PM, Arne Vajh??j wrote:
>>>> Ada95 is a much bigger language than Ada83.
>>>>
>>>> And as with other language that got redesigned then
>>>> I believe that such a redesign is not as clean as it
>>>> would have been if it had been done so from the beginning.
>>>
>>> But, the amount of it that a first year college student would
>>> use in a first programming course is so small that either of
>>> them would be more than adequate and easy for a student to
>>> pick up.
>> 
>> Probably true.
>> 
>> But the fact that such a course cannot cover all or at least
>> most of the language is a good indication that the language
>> is complex.

I don't think that is the case at al.

>> 
>> You could teach most of standard Pascal in 6 months.
> 
> A good first programming course does not teach any language
> at all.  It teaches concepts and the language is only the
> tool used to present those concepts.  That's why I have seen
> Fortran, BASIC, Pascal, Ada, Java, Python, Ruby, C and a number
> of other languages used at various educational institutes and
> levels for that first programming course.  The concepts to
> be covered and the audience who is the target are (and should
> be) the deciding factor in which language to use.
> 

All excelent points, Bill.  I agree.

Regards, Tim.