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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On the other hand, as I said in my original post, sentiments about what it means to be a "real programmer" pushed me off of the path that eventually led me to working on the Rust programming language. So I just disagree with your empirical claim.
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Isn't it possible you just didn't really have the interest or patience when you were younger though? People change. I've changed my opinions on lots of things over the years. Maybe you just weren't ready yet? ;-)
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As an older programmer I plain don't know what "unlearnable bad habits" you're talking about. Did I understand you as saying that writing code in Ruby makes people resistant to code documentation earlier?
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No, what I'm saying is you will initially learn to count on a person deducing, or a computer to determine at runtime, the state of your program, the pre/post conditions of a function, etc. - which is costly both in computer and human resources, and a habit you must then unlearn.
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Whereas in go you are forced to understand the pre and post conditions of a function?
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Type hints. A type hint is just an assertion about the the state of the program. Things are much simpler if you state your assumptions - "this parameter will be a number" helps both a person and a computer understand an important pre condition for a function dealing with numbers.
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But also (speaking to Ruby and JS specifically) just knowing if an object has a method - rather than looking through every line of code in the system to learn if a method was generated and attached somewhere, at some point. It's not simple for a person, at all.
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As opposed to go, where you have to search the program to look for interface definitions that might apply to your object?
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The much more common scenario, in my experience, is people who learn JS or PHP only, write horrible code for some years, then turn to management. IMO, learning the hard way may knock off a few potentials, but will also clear out a *lot* of ppl who shouldn't be writing code.
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And this isn't an elitist point of view - I think we can save a lot of people the grief of learning something they ultimately don't have the discipline or stamina to undertake - and a lot of others from having to fix the broken code they leave behind.
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