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

[Simon Clubley]

On 2022-03-17, Dave Froble <davef at tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
> 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:
>>>>>
>>>>> 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.
>>
>
> You seem to have this weird concept that the language makes the programmer.  I 
> seriously doubt that.
>

The language _helps_ make the programmer. You need to have the appropriate
calibre of person to work with before that makes a difference.

> 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.
>

A potentially good programmer only becomes an actual good programmer
after been exposed to the concepts and techniques they need to know
to make that step. Someone needs to teach them what the good techniques
are in the first place, and why, and they need to practice those techniques.

Can you imagine what the world would look like if people who became
safety critical engineers had only been taught Javascript while learning
programming and software engineering concepts ?

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Walking destinations on a map are further away than they appear.