| 00:00.04 | beandog | I like bf better |
| 00:00.09 | vontrapp | |lart php |
| 00:00.24 | sjansen | levi: Reality intrudes on the programmer. |
| 00:00.25 | beandog | ah, he left |
| 00:00.35 | beandog | still couldnt figure out wth he was trying to *accomplish* |
| 00:01.25 | levi | sjansen: It shouldn't be necessary to know what a pointer is to learn algorithms and how to think about writing a program. |
| 00:01.53 | levi | Once you learn the basic CS concepts and computer architecture, then C is a great language to go to. |
| 00:02.06 | levi | If you need low-level control, that is. |
| 00:02.18 | beandog | Why would you learn C? Just to make things harder? |
| 00:02.19 | sjansen | levi: If you don't understand pointers you'll have a harder time understanding reference v. value passing. |
| 00:02.43 | Maquis | sjansen: very true |
| 00:02.48 | sjansen | It'll just be magical use of & in PHP (for example) because "it's faster". |
| 00:03.02 | Maquis | i didn't understand those until i learned about pointers |
| 00:03.04 | levi | sjansen: You don't need to know that to develop algorithms, though. |
| 00:03.12 | sjansen | Sure you do. |
| 00:03.19 | Maquis | and pointers aren't nearly as confusing as people make them out to be |
| 00:03.46 | Jayce^ | Maquis, they can be tough though, hence my nick |
| 00:03.55 | Jayce^ | good old turbo pascal on 8088's |
| 00:04.04 | Maquis | sure... but what isn't tough |
| 00:04.04 | Maquis | ? |
| 00:04.06 | sjansen | When you under stand that Java's String.length is probably doing a memory walk each time, you suddenly understand why it's a bad idea. |
| 00:04.07 | Jayce^ | could take those things down like popcorn.. |
| 00:04.30 | levi | sjansen: Sure, but I'm talking an intro to programming language. |
| 00:04.31 | *** join/#utah xbmodder_lappy (~xbmodder@adsl-66-127-54-228.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net) |
| 00:04.53 | sjansen | And when something starts acting strangely and you can't figure out why your beautiful theoretical algorithm doesn't perform in the real world, it's useful to be able to meditate and arrive and useful, testable theories |
| 00:04.57 | levi | I'm not saying it's a bad idea to learn C, just that you should probably learn a higher-level language first, and then learn how the underpinnings work. |
| 00:05.17 | Maquis | levi: i disagree |
| 00:05.27 | Maquis | i came into college knowing nothing but vb... |
| 00:05.36 | sjansen | levi: I'm familiar with the argument, but I'm not sure I agree. It's become too much of a tautology in the community. |
| 00:05.36 | fungus | I think that will create lazy programmers. |
| 00:05.37 | Maquis | and they started us on java, then moved to c++, and now a bit to c |
| 00:05.44 | Jayce^ | Maquis, so you came into college knowing nothing worthwhile.. |
| 00:05.51 | Maquis | i think that i would've preferred working with c/c++ first |
| 00:05.55 | Maquis | Jayce^: exactly |
| 00:06.23 | levi | Well, you can approach it either way. |
| 00:06.24 | sjansen | Don't throw pointer math at beginners, but don't waste their time learning a language that will forever obscure the hidden machinery. |
| 00:06.34 | xbmodder_lappy | ? |
| 00:06.38 | xbmodder_lappy | ping |
| 00:06.42 | Jayce^ | pong |
| 00:06.44 | Maquis | once you know how to do c/c++, and you understand pointers and that stuff, it's easier to go back and learn something like java... |
| 00:06.47 | Maquis | pong |
| 00:07.03 | sjansen | Within the short time it takes to learn flow control, they'll be confident to start into how memory really works. |
| 00:07.04 | fungus | Whoops, duplicate packets. |
| 00:07.39 | sjansen | I think a good grounding in basics moving to theory is better than the other direction. |
| 00:07.46 | Jayce^ | :) |
| 00:08.47 | xbmodder_lappy | ? |
| 00:09.56 | levi | Well, the biggest hurdle I've seen when working with people who are struggling with programming classes is trying to think about writing programs. The 'basics' obscure the program-creation logic, and I think it would be easier to learn to write programs if that stuff was out of the way. |
| 00:10.20 | levi | I agree that computer architecture and the underpinnings should be introduced early, though. |
| 00:11.30 | levi | Once you get over the initial hurdle of 'how do I get from "make the computer do this" to a series of statements and conditionals and stuff?' you can move onto low-level stuff. |
| 00:11.50 | levi | If you've learned to write programs in Basic, you're already past that hurdle. |
| 00:12.06 | xbmodder_lappy | basic program writing is HARD! |
| 00:12.12 | beandog | how do you figure that? |
| 00:12.32 | levi | Are you asking me? |
| 00:12.35 | xbmodder_lappy | IT IS! |
| 00:12.56 | beandog | yah |
| 00:13.57 | levi | beandog: Okay, what exactly are you asking how I figure? |
| 00:13.59 | sjansen | levi: Starting with C doesn't mean starting with memcpy pointer math. |
| 00:14.19 | beandog | I dont know, Im partly lost. |
| 00:14.28 | fungus | ITT starts their software developer students with VB 6. Eeek! |
| 00:14.38 | levi | sjansen: Sure, but it doesn't even have a fully-formed concept of a string. |
| 00:14.40 | beandog | But partly understand too |
| 00:14.41 | sjansen | But it shouldn't take more than a few weeks to get past flow control and into numbers versuse strings. |