CP4E was Re: Deitel and Deitel Book...

[Roman Suzi]

On Wed, 6 Mar 2002, Ramkumar Kashyap wrote:

> non-intuitive manner and lose out on a big chunk of their audience.
>  Only a few of us that persevere, end up learning the language and even
> fewer go on to achieve "GURU" status. Why is this?
>
> I have seen several posts on CLP and the newbie tutors list, where
> people mention that their first encounter with programming was in BASIC,
> COBOL, Pascal, Fortran.  They did not really make any progress, gave up
> on programming.  Now they are attempting once again, hoping things have
> become a little easier.

I think, the initial language has nothing to do with later gaving up
programming. These same thoughts bother me for several years already and I
came to the decision that almost nothing does matter: only motivation to
continue learning programming. Then certain barrier falls and a person is
from that point capable of programming (in any language, as it is
universal skill). It's like mastering bicycle or learning to swim.

> I would like to know how the pattern was set to teach programming
> languages.  You do an introductory program like "Hello World", learn how
> to compile and run it. Then jump into decision structures, loops,
> functions, etc.
>
> This is extremely non-intuitive to most people.  Most 5,6,7 year olds
> can speak fluently in their native languages, but how many of them could
> tell you about vowels, consonants, nouns, verbs, adjectives.  In fact
> quite a few of them speak multiple languages, can easily differentiate
> sentence structures in those languages, but would be hard-pressed to
> give defintions of the above.
>
> So how come in programming, we ALWAYS jump into the constructs of a
> language, rather than just doing, gaining proficiency and then
> understanding how it is put together?
>
> I think that unless the approach to teaching Programming languages, is
> changed and follows the more universal style of teaching spoke language
> or verbal communication, Computer Programming for Everybody will remain
> a dream.
>
> Just my .02 cents

Sincerely yours, Roman A.Suzi
-- 
 - Petrozavodsk - Karelia - Russia - mailto:rnd at onego.ru -