• communistthrowaway69 [none/use name]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Once upon a time, it was the dominant language (still kinda is), and it's halfway between the laziness of a scripting language that does most things for you (can teach bad habits) and a more hardcore language like C (which is bad for beginners and forces you to do a lot of extra work.)

    No language since strikes that balance quite so well while still being a good teaching tool for beginners. Maybe C#?

    Teaching programming is always gonna be a pain in the ass and is always gonna be half irrelevant by the time you're done with it.

    • Pezevenk [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      4 years ago

      We're not supposed to be programmers anyways, all we need is a scripting language to run a few dumb scripts. We learn all that OOP in the first semester that we just never fucking touch again, it's utter clown shit.

      • communistthrowaway69 [none/use name]
        ·
        4 years ago

        No argument there.

        I remember sitting in on a CE class once while, as a "challenge," their assignment was to purposefully use a binary tree wrong, and to make it using a 2d array in C. They were not only learning something they weren't taught to understand and would never use again, they were being forced to use it wrong on purpose.

        It's a symptom of the fact that programming developed out of the computer science discipline, coming out of the Math major department. So there's never been a good, cohesive way to just teach the basics to people. It's always carrying all of this stupid baggage along with it.

        • Pezevenk [he/him]
          ·
          edit-2
          4 years ago

          Oh, I forgot to mention the best part: in the exams, we have to write the code ON Paper with a pen etc. That's right, we don't even have a computer next to us or anything, we write down the code on a sheet of paper with no other aid. And it doesn't help that the asshole professor will often detract many points for forgetting a semicolon.

          • Sphere [he/him, they/them]
            ·
            4 years ago

            Ugh that's godawful. Reminds me of my last interview, where I had to write compile-ready Java code on a fucking whiteboard. After that I decided I would never again write code in an interview. If someone wants to know if I can code, I can provide them with some code I've written, but I'm never doing another whiteboard coding exercise again.