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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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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Go has problems, it's not my favorite language - but it is a pretty good language for learning, because of its small scope and encouraging you to think about types. (even though the type system is pretty basic.)
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I think we definitely need to get rid of the "real programmer" rhetoric. Programming isn't a secret society that we should try to deny entry into
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There aren't any "bad habits" to "unlearn". High level languages simply come with crutches that let you do stuff without having a slightest clue about what's going on. That's fine, but you're only robbing yourself by not acquiring that knowledge.
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You can learn it later. So long as you know "there's more, when you're interested and ready".
End of conversation
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I would like to point out that ^this thread does not mean that there are no ppl who thrive by learning stricter languages first.
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"I think" and "in my experience" is not me making "empirical claims" - it's not verifiable or provable, it's just my opinion :-)
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Rust is brilliant. It's like someone heard all of my complaints about C++ and fixed 99% of them. Still not happy about macros though.
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