free programming language

[Steve Holmes]

Geee, I have too bad ones hear:) My first programming language in college
was Fortran in 1975 and I later taught myself C by guess who! Kernighan
and Richie.  I didn't know any better, really!:).  Along the way I learned
and worked professionally for many years with Cobol, another yucky
language:).  I generally like C but a beginner can sure get hurt by miss
managed pointers.  I took a Visual Basic course a couple years ago and it
was my introduction to object oriented programming and I can't say it was
a bad one either.  VB was fun and I would have thought, not so bad a way
to get the feet wet but should really move on quickly to true programming.
That might seem backwards but the person won't get bogged down immediately
with costly syntax but then again, one should learn to do arrithmitic in
his head before picking up a calculator.

Now that I've done a pretty good job of contradicting myself:).

On Mon, 11 Mar 2002 jwantz at hpcc2.hpcc.noaa.gov wrote:

> Hi Greg,
> I definitely disagree.  BASIC teaches bad programming habits like
> FORTRAN i.e. non-structured programming.  The problem with C is not the
> language, but that most people learning C start by reading Kernighan and
> Richie.  I have been programming in C since 1986 but it took me almost
> half of that time to unlearn bad habits I picked up from BASIC and
> FORTRAN.  Now, one could make a case for Pascal as your first language
> but I really think BASIC is a bad idea.  Sure, you might be able to
> accomplish certain tasks easier in BASIC than in C, but the time you
> spend in learning C will make you a much better programmer in the long
> run.
>      Jim Wantz
> On Sun, 10 Mar 2002, Gregory Nowak wrote:
>
> > Since we're on opinions, in my opinion c or c++ are not good languages to begin with. I believe from personal experience that it is best to start with something like basic, and then move on to languages like c or c++ where the concepts you learned from BASIC will help you advance in higher languages faster.
> > Greg
> >
> >
> > On Sun, Mar 10, 2002 at 06:48:35PM -0500, jwantz at hpcc2.hpcc.noaa.gov wrote:
> > > Hi Alex,
> > > While BASIC sounds like a good starting language in my opinion it is
> > > not.  First, it is very non-standard (no two BASIC interpreters or
> > > compilers are alike).  Second, file i/o in most BASICs is really rather
> > > painful.  As far as I know, the only BASIC widely used in WINDOWS is
> > > Visual BASIC which is hardly free!
> > >
> > >      Jim Wantz
> > > n Sun, 10 Mar 2002, Alex Snow wrote:
> > >
> > > > I would use, and want to learn, basic, if there was a free Compiler and/or
> > > > IDE for basic under winblows.
> > > > ----- Original Message -----
> > > > From: "Gregory Nowak" <gnowak1 at uic.edu>
> > > > To: <speakup at braille.uwo.ca>
> > > > Sent: Sunday, March 10, 2002 2:56 PM
> > > > Subject: Re: free programming language
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > > How about BASIC?
> > > > > Greg
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > On Sun, Mar 10, 2002 at 01:25:38PM -0500, Alex Snow wrote:
> > > > > > Hi.
> > > > > > I am looking for a programming language for windows that is both free
> > > > and easy to learn for a beginning programmer.  Does such a language exist?
> > > > > >
> > > > > > ---
> > > > >
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