[Info-vax] And another one bites the dust....

[Scott Dorsey]

=?UTF-8?Q?Arne_Vajh=c3=b8j?=  <arne at vajhoej.dk> wrote:
>On 2/21/2022 10:19 AM, Scott Dorsey wrote:
>> Academics shouldn't be teaching programming languages, they should be
>> teaching programming concepts.  If you know C or Pascal, learning
>> how to write the procedure division code in COBOL should be a matter
>> of a couple hour's study.  Once you know the concepts, learning the
>> syntax is easy.  (Frustrating, perhaps, because the COBOL syntax is
>> so horrible, but easy.)
>> 
>> So, I don't think there is any need to teach the programming part of
>> COBOL in school.
>
>Learning the basic building blocks of variables, if, loops and
>call are relative easy. Most people can learn that stuff.

You should try teaching Freshman programming to football players if you
think this is easy.  There's a thing that happens in the head to turn
on understanding of programming flow, and once it happens it becomes
easy but getting it to happen to the uninitiated is sometimes hard.

>There are more difficult topics. Some that I know cause a
>lot of problems for people to grasp are:
>- covariant and contravariant generic types
>- currying and partially applied functions
>
>Note that those are not language specific either - they can
>be shown in different languages - even though far from all
>languages support them.

You bet!

It gets even more interesting when you talk about things like garbage 
collection and coroutines which are language features but rely on specific
operating system features as well.  You can't talk about one without the
other.  But you have to talk about them because they are important.
--scott

-- 
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."