D as a college language

[Russel Winder]

On Sat, 2018-05-05 at 03:02 +0000, KingJoffrey via Digitalmars-d wrote:
[…]
> 

> Students should learn C first, Java second. Not one or the other, 
> both!

What is the pedegogy here, what are the justifications.

In UK we have Scratch then Python then ??? This is working tremendously well
to get large numbers of young people programming far better than most
professional programmers.

> Then, perhaps, they will begin to understand the basics of 
> computer programming - from both extremes.

C and Java are not extremes. Lisp, assembly language, Haskell, Erlang, these
are extremes.

> D could be a postgrad interest perhaps.

No, this would be a bad idea.We can debate this elsewhere.

> And what's earning an income got to do with anything? It's a 
> stupid concept that humans have imposed on themselves, and it's 
> the primary cause of all things that are wrong with society. The 
> sooner we move to universal incomes, the better grauate 
> programmers we'll get, cause they'll be studying it because it 
> actually interests them, as opposed to being motived by its' 
> 'earning' capacity.

There being jobs using a programming language may not be a primary driver, but
it is a secondary driver. University courses not using Java, Go, and
JavaScript somewhere in the curriculum theses days get shunned by students. OK
so all programming is clearly Web programming and nothing else is needed. :-)

So let me provide something actually constructive:

Given that the world will move inexorably to using Python for teaching young
people programming the trick is to have a Python → D learning programme with
lots of support. Teaching support is everything in this aspect of the game.

Teach the teachers that D is the route from Python to native code programming
and thence C, C++, Fortran, etc, and you have an angle. Having an angle that
appeals to the teachers is the first step in getting students to be taught a
programming language.

Java proved this.  


-- 
Russel.
==========================================
Dr Russel Winder      t: +44 20 7585 2200
41 Buckmaster Road    m: +44 7770 465 077
London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk
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