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RE: [TCLUG:13004] AP Comp. Sci.



I guess since I've been able to make the leap from C to C++/Java, I've never
really understood the hang-up there. I do think that "thinking OO" is more
difficult than "thinking procedurally", and so there are a set of people out
there that can _get_ C (procedural thinking) but can't _get_ C++/Java (OO
thinking) and some (but not all, maybe not even most) of the problem that
people with experience in switching from procedural languages to OO
languages is related to them just hitting their wall as opposed to not being
able to switch paradigms. (In other words, they wouldn't be able to _get_
C++/Java even if they hadn't been exposed to C earlier...).

I've taught C++, to both people that had previous experience in procedural
languages and to people pretty brand-new to programming (not in university
settings though), and I've read a lot of the arguments about not learning
the procedural stuff before the OO stuff. But I've seen way too may
programmers, especially ones that only know 4GL languages, that just don't
understand what their programs really do inside the computer. I advocate
learning C not so much to learn procedural programming, but to learn about
things like memory management and pointers - and to experience being able to
write a program in a language that doesn't restrict what you can and can't
do! I guess it all boils down to knowing something about as many tools as
possible, so you can pick the right one for the job at hand.

Mike...



-----Original Message-----
From: Scott Dier - dieman [mailto:dieman@ringworld.org]
Sent: Friday, January 28, 2000 11:19 PM
To: tclug-list@mn-linux.org
Subject: RE: [TCLUG:13004] AP Comp. Sci.

On Fri, 28 Jan 2000, Michael Hentges wrote:

> Then on to java or C++! I'll have to check out python - heard of it, but
Its gotta be a proven fact somewhere that many people dont move into
C++/Java from C procedural programming very easily.

Scheme, however, is a differetn story, its different enough that you dont
learn some of the bad habits before C++/Java :)

--
Scott Dier <dieman@ringworld.org> #nicnac@efnet 612.301.0265
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