Beginner ?. Why does D suggest to learn java

via Digitalmars-d-learn digitalmars-d-learn at puremagic.com
Fri Oct 17 01:49:45 PDT 2014


On Friday, 17 October 2014 at 08:33:46 UTC, bearophile wrote:
>> The IDE support is probably a bit better with Java/C#
>
> The importance of the IDE for the first language is 
> controversial. I think it's not so important.

Perhaps it depends on the person and the language, but I would 
think autocompletion hints and getting visual cues of syntax 
errors important.

Error messages with line numbers can be overwhelming, hard to 
understand and discourage experimentation. Newbies often make 
many syntactical errors.

Even when doing interactive stuff in python I find ipython a lot 
more convenient than regular python. Insepecting a class by 
hitting tab is very useful for learning I think.

>> and using a statically typed language as your first language 
>> has advantages,
>
> While no one has determined scientifically that you are right, 
> I too believe that static typing has some advantages for a 
> first language. I think there are no perfect first languages.

That's probably right, because motivation is the most important 
factor. So even matlab can be a nice environment for learning if 
it fits your interests.

In general I think Dart could turn into a nice language for 
beginners. It is dynamic and "a bit forgiving", but has static 
checking and you can see the results right in your browser (and 
debug it). But I think the IDE should be mandatory…



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