D vs Java as a first programming language

Sean Kelly sean at invisibleduck.org
Sun Sep 28 12:25:00 PDT 2008


Walter Bright wrote:
> bearophile wrote:
>> So beside asking the age of your students, a second important
>> question to ask you is the kind of things you want to teach, and the
>> kind of students you have. If your purpose is to teach just
>> programming, then Java may be better. If your purpose is to teach
>> some math too, to think in a flexible way, logical thinking,
>> recursivity, functional programming, parallel thinking, and so on,
>> then maybe Scheme is a better choice, despite it's almost useless
>> compared to Java.
> 
> That's a very good point. If my students intended to become top 
> professionals and had a keen interest, I'd start them with assembler, 
> and follow up with D. If they were 9 year old kids wanting to toy 
> around, I'd probably start with a language with instant gratification, 
> like javascript.

Also, different people learn best in different ways.  Some can't focus 
on high-level issues unless they understand what's going on under the 
covers, while others are the opposite.  If I were to design a curriculum 
I'd suggest the bottom-up approach (ie. architecture to assembler to D), 
but leave students the option of doing the reverse as well.  At least 
insofar as these first few courses are concerned.


Sean



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