What killed Smalltalk could kill Python

[Ethan Furman]

On 01/21/2015 05:36 PM, Chris Angelico wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 11:09 AM, Mario Figueiredo <marfig at gmail.com> wrote:
>> "I want to become a programmer so I can make games" is, on the vast
>> majority of cases, the quote of someone who will never become a
>> programmer. Why should teachers reward that kind of thought?
> 
> How about "I want to become a programmer so my brother, 2.5 years
> older than me, won't be better than me any more"? Should that kind of
> thinking be rewarded? Because that's how I got started. My brother was
> being taught the basics of programming, I was jealous (being the
> second child will tend to produce that), and so at six years old, I
> started learning to code. And then a few years later, I wanted to
> learn C because my brother didn't know it (we'd both learned BASIC),
> and since I didn't have a C compiler, I learned 8086 Assembly Language
> instead, using DEBUG.EXE. Largely out of jealousy.

There is a difference between /your/ motivation to learn something, and teachers /pandering/ to such motivations.
There's nothing wrong with "I want to make games" as a personal driving factor, but the educational system should still
teach decent programming, not whatever piece of garbage will produce quick results at the expense of long-term productivity.

--
~Ethan~

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