[lug] First Programming Language

[Michael J. Hammel]

On Thu, 2018-01-04 at 10:27 -0700, Jed S. Baer wrote:
> Oh, come now. Laying poor programming knowledge at the feet of
> Python,
> vs. any other language? 

I'd actually lay it at the feet of universities who teach Python
because it's easy to learn, without backing it with the foundations of
programming practice.  It isn't that I blame Python.  It's easy.  And
easy things tend to get done badly because people don't think them
through as much as they probably should.  

The first hint to me that this was a problem was when I tried to
examine XBMC plugins.  Ugh.  What a mess.  But I've seen it at work on
projects I came into after the fact as well.  

> It's just
> as
> possible to be a bad programmer in OCaml or Haskell as it is to be a
> bad
> programmer in Fortran. We might as well point fingers at PHP as well.

Absolutely.  Except it's Python being taught at Universities, where the
 people I have to mentor come from.  If it were OCaml being taught and
then being used in production code (and becoming popular for all the
wrong reasons), I'd be whining about that instead.

> I'm still in favor of building a solid foundation. That makes me
> think of
> C. 

I agree completely.  I built my entire PiBox Media Platform using just
C, not scripting languages (well, except for the stupid web interface
which was just a side thought).  But the original request was for a
language for a college business student.  C seems inappropriate for
that use case.  Python is better.  Javascript, IMHO, even better if
there is a desire to expand on that initial knowledge later.

-- 
Michael J. Hammel <mjhammel at graphics-muse.org>