[Info-vax] Programming languages, was: Re: VMS documentation

[Dave Froble]

On 3/17/2022 3:10 PM, Simon Clubley wrote:
> On 2022-03-17, Dave Froble <davef at tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
>> On 3/16/2022 8:55 PM, Simon Clubley wrote:
>>> On 2022-03-16, Arne Vajhøj <arne at vajhoej.dk> wrote:
>>>> On 3/16/2022 8:09 PM, Dave Froble wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Basic on the various DEC systems.
>>>>
>>>> Wirth, Dijkstra etc. did not like Basic.
>>>>
>>>> But yes - Basic is also an easy language to learn.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Easy to learn but it doesn't mean you are teaching students the right
>>> things for when they need to start writing production code. :-)
>>
>> What makes you right, and me wrong?
>>
>
> Pascal was created after the experiences of earlier teaching languages
> and was based on Wirth's experiences elsewhere. It has strong type safety
> and strong modular programming concepts, essential for teaching good
> programming practice.
>
> Basic was an earlier teaching language with none of that and could easily
> be considered the Javascript of its day, with a mentality based on ease
> of use instead of helping the student to develop robust programming
> techniques that would serve them when they started writing code for
> production systems.
>
> Simon.
>

You seem to have this weird concept that the language makes the programmer.  I 
seriously doubt that.

A good programmer will use good techniques regardless of the language.  A poor 
programmer will find ways to screw up in just about any language.

-- 
David Froble                       Tel: 724-529-0450
Dave Froble Enterprises, Inc.      E-Mail: davef at tsoft-inc.com
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