After playing a little bit with QBasic when I was a kid, I was given a K&R C book. My takeaway: programming is not for me. I didn't look at programming seriously again until I was 23. This article is terrible advice.https://www.zeroequalsfalse.press/2017/11/29/c/
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Incidentally, a relative who was really interested in programming went to college and her first course was in C++. It was too much too fast and she quit (and never became a programmer). Unless we're actively trying to reduce the number of programmers, don't start with C or C++.
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Replying to @wycats
I've been grappling with this at the undergraduate level (where we do start with C++) for our object oriented course. What do you think are better options? Ruby?
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Replying to @ProblematicProf
Ruby, JavaScript. But the main thing is start making things that you can share with others right away. Create a blog and start tweaking it in ways *you want*. There's nothing more motivating in programming than seeing an idea you had in your head take form.
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Replying to @wycats
I completely agree with you on C - it's a terrible language. But as a first language, Ruby and Javascript are terrible choices as well - you may have more fun, but you will likely learn how to do everything wrong.https://medium.com/@mindplay/the-problem-with-learning-languages-like-javascript-php-ruby-or-python-first-is-you-can-get-away-7accc689d365 …
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Replying to @mindplaydk
Can you give an example of something "loose" you can get away with in both Ruby and JavaScript that you can't do in Go that you have to spend years to unlearn?
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Replying to @wycats
Yes, you can learn how to get away with certain wrong things in Go as well, but it's not the first thing you will learn - in Go is easier to do things right, and you have to go deeper to break the rules - in Ruby, JS, Python etc. it's the other way around.
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Replying to @mindplaydk
I really want you to provide me with an example, not just rhetoric.
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Replying to @wycats
Heh, okay, how about for starters, documenting your argument types and return types? Most people learn about doc-blocks much, much later - it dawns on them much too late why others can't understand the functions they write, if they can't understand the before/after conditions.
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I asked for an example of a bad habit in Ruby/JS but not Go that takes years to unlearn and you repeated the definition of types. I know the definition of types. I work on Rust and use TypeScript (strict) every day. I want an example of a bad habit that takes years to unlearn.
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