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

[Simon Clubley]

On 2022-03-18, abrsvc <dansabrservices at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> And if they only know Fortran, that's all they can do.
>> Simon. 
>> 
> Horse crap!!
>
> I started with an assembly language for the 6502 and the first "real" programming language was FORTRAN.
> Since then, I have successfully coded in many languages (last count 15+).  Don't generalize.
>
> I also disagree that the language makes the programmer.  Programming is a way of thinking and logical progression of steps.   Yes these steps may happen in parallel, but fundamentally, programming is just a way to state steps in solving a problem.
>  
> I think that it is much more valuable to learn how to think and break down problems into steps rather than to be an expert in the syntax of a language.  You can easily look up the syntax on how to accomplish what you need to accomplish.  It is much harder to "fit" an elegant technique to a problem just for the sake of using that technique.  And yes, I have seen programmers "find a way" to use a feature of a language even though it was not the right way to get the job done.

And you have just made the same mistake that way too many people make Dan.

Learning a programming language is not about learning the syntax, it
is about learning the idioms of that language and _why_ those idioms
exist.

For one very specific example, you can write C style code using Ada
syntax (for example, by making everything an Integer, etc), but it
isn't until someone shows you the Ada way of doing things, and tells
you _why_ the Ada way of doing things exists, that you really start
to write more robust code using techniques that you can then use in
all your programs from now on.

That's why Pascal and other languages were created - to expose students
to concepts and techniques that they may otherwise have not have been
exposed to. So yes, the language the student uses to learn those concepts
really does make a major difference.

BTW, for another really simple example more people here might be aware of,
how many people still use the unchecked array access syntax in C++ because
that's what they are used to elsewhere, instead of having had it drummed
into them during teaching to use the checked access syntax instead when
they are writing important code (and ideally in all the code they write) ?

You can write valid C++ programs using the unchecked syntax, but more
errors will be detected in your code if you use the checked syntax instead.
So no, once again, it's not just about learning some new syntax.

Simon.

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