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What's the dumbest reason you've learned a programming language? (programming.dev)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Why do you even have to mention OOP? C# is object oriented too. Would you start explaining OOP too when teaching C#?

Python is comparatively easier as it's nearly literally pseudo-code. There's no need to even write a main function or functions at all. It uses less characters too e.g no need for semi-colon, brackets in for loops and if statements

As for indentation being exact, IMO that's on you. Beginners should be given a proper development environment to work in that helps them as much as possible. Modern editors and IDEs point out syntax errors and indentation errors are incredibly basic. If they are working in an environment that doesn't even point that out to them, they have been setup incorrectly.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Why do you even have to mention OOP?

Because I was saying why it's a bad choice to teach to Year 7. I already said if it was up to me I'd teach them Pascal.

C# is object oriented too

Yes, I know, but in this case it's the lesser of 2 evils, for the other reasons I gave.

Python is comparatively easier as it’s nearly literally pseudo-code

And as I just said to someone else, students even struggle with pseudo code.

e.g no need for semi-colon, brackets

And I already said that's one of the drawbacks - indenting has to be EXACT or your program doesn't work anymore.

As for indentation being exact, IMO that’s on you

It's not on me - it's in the language itself to begin with. I have no control over it.

Beginners should be given a proper development environment to work in that helps them as much as possible. Modern editors and IDEs point out syntax errors and indentation errors are incredibly basic

Now see if you can get the school admin's to install those ones. As I said, that's the root issue to begin with - the school admin's.

If they are working in an environment that doesn’t even point that out to them, they have been setup incorrectly

Now see if you can get the school admin's to fix it. Welcome to the struggle the teachers face in teaching what WE want to teach them.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

It seems you did the best you could with what you had to work with. It's a shame the other users don't understand that you didn't get to choose the tools your students could use and instead went with what they, in their freedom to choose and install what they want, would have used to teach. I can imagine you only had notepad and Idle to use.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

Thanks. From memory we were using repl.it, or something very similar. This made it easy for me to look at their code when they had problems (and even then, as I said to someone else, it was quite a while before I realised one of them simply had the wrong indentation on one line - I kept looking at the code and thinking I couldn't see anything wrong with it, then eventually I realised there was a wrong indentation. If it took me that long to realise, then of course that's something students are going to struggle with).