First programming language for high school students?
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Objective C really sucks ( addressing the OSX angle ). VB.NET is very English like, which may help. C# is also a good first language IMO, and bleeds to c++ more easily.
Christian Graus Please read this if you don't understand the answer I've given you. If you're still stuck, ask me for more information.
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I can't do that Dave. wrote:
My 15 year old son (ninth grade) wants me to teach him programming.
If you are doing the teaching, I would choose a language that you know back-to-front - nothing worse at that sort of age than a teacher learning along with the student. Also, instant gratification is good at that age (!) so something GUI has the appeal of getting something visual up and running quickly. I taught basic VB .Net to students of this age at school - and those with at least 1/2 a logical brain picked it up pretty well - but they really needed to see something happening quickly. If I were you, I'd write a simple game of Life in whatever lanbguage first, so you have something to show - then you can take him through the development step by step. I personally think that this is not too young an age to introduce OO concepts too - so teaching OO development can make more sense if it is introduced early. If you produce the basic model, with appropriate classes - then when he gives it a go, there's always something to compare his results to, and to help out if he's stuck.
Take a chill pill, Daddy-o .\\axxx (That's an 'M')
maxxx# wrote:
Also, instant gratification is good at that age (!) so something GUI has the appeal of getting something visual up and running quickly.
I think this is correct, considering the age of your son. Have you considered using [Flash] ActionScript? The current AS 3.0 programming model is quite nice IMHO and lots of documentation and visual appealing examples are now available. I think AS is now mature enough to teach the basics of programming and architectural principles yet maintaining the connection with the 15 year old world. As a development environment you could use the Flash authoring tool, or something like Flex Builder. Good luck, Peter.
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I don't want to start a religious war here or have to wade through a history of computer languages. I would have posted on /. for that! My 15 year old son (ninth grade) wants me to teach him programming. I don't want to traumatize him with assembler -- dealing with me should be sufficient. What would be a good first language to use? We both think a barebones implementation of Life (John Conway's ...) could be a good first project. Source code should be available in virtually every language for every possible platform. He's looked at Scratch and MindStorms. He thinks they are too simplistic and wants something that is deeper. (I know MindStorms has C++, etc., but the Lego platform isn't inspiring him.). And, I don't even know if either Scratch or MindStorms is up to the task of Life. Next up might be Micropolis (SimCity) although that could be a bit daunting. Development platforms can be XP or OS X. Thanks all, David
Why don't you try simple games with GDI+? Snake, sokoban, ... stuff like that. I always love the fact you can draw items and make them move. I would recommend a C type language though, VB is really nasty ;)
V.
Stop smoking so you can: Enjoy longer the money you save. Moviereview Archive -
I'll tell you my experience as a self-taught teenager programmer (I'm 18 now). Maybe that'll be good input... Maybe. I started at his age with VB 4 (!! because I had it...), then quickly switched to VB.NET when I saw an ad about the free editions of Visual Studio (http://www.microsoft.com/express). Some time before I had my try with C++ and Java and didn't really pick it up. I did some mIRC scripting too (interesting to try, too). So yes, I picked VB up and liked it for its english-like syntax and visual designer. I started making a calculator program (good startup project if you ask me). So I drew its interface in Paint and recopied it in Visual Studio. Then I started double-clicking the UI elements (mainly buttons!) and wrote code... outputBox.Text &= "5" for example. I knew how to do basic coding elements (conditions, selects, functions, subs) from my little mIRC/BASIC/C++ experience, and I've read about (built-in) types in my C++ book. If I didn't know how to do something (for example converting from String to Integer (or Double)), I'd hit F1 and search. That worked well. One tip I can give you at this time... it doesn't matter if your son writes shitty code or even hacks when he's beginning. I wouldn't recommend starting directly with OOP. Since I saw some assembler, I thought it would be interesting to try to dis-ASM my own program. I knew what .NET meant, and I knew it ran its own bytecode, like Java. So I Googled for .NET disassembler and downloaded Reflector. That program was a kind of revelation. I didn't look at the disASMs for long, I was more interested by how it showed the elements of my program in a tree. Yes, that was how I was introduced to OOP. Interesting, huh? Yes, I've read some disassembly. Hovering my mouse over an instruction made a tooltip appear, explaining what it meant. Disassembling simple structures like
my_var = 5 * other_varwould be interesting. Reflector also acted as a really good .NET API reference and also showed me how that thing worked. Priceless. It also made me find out about C#, and I liked its syntax better. Reminded me of C++, JavaScript and mIRC. So I downloaded it, and made the switch. As simple as that. After that, well, some practicing. I eventually started writing more complex programs, learned more about OOP, threads and the like. I wrote a IRC client stub using smartirc4net. I never finished my calculator :-D . Then, I switched to C++. Why? Because it resembled C# and it was multiplatform, and everyone used it, etc. etc. ForDrFrankenstein90 wrote:
And next year we're starting COBOL
:confused: X| I never touched COBOL anymore outside college. (5 years ago) They still teach that? Never take a job to do COBOL, that's for the 'old' guys. I don't mean this negative, but those who are using COBOL are gradually switching. What do they teach these kids these days. :-\
V.
Stop smoking so you can: Enjoy longer the money you save. Moviereview Archive -
I don't want to start a religious war here or have to wade through a history of computer languages. I would have posted on /. for that! My 15 year old son (ninth grade) wants me to teach him programming. I don't want to traumatize him with assembler -- dealing with me should be sufficient. What would be a good first language to use? We both think a barebones implementation of Life (John Conway's ...) could be a good first project. Source code should be available in virtually every language for every possible platform. He's looked at Scratch and MindStorms. He thinks they are too simplistic and wants something that is deeper. (I know MindStorms has C++, etc., but the Lego platform isn't inspiring him.). And, I don't even know if either Scratch or MindStorms is up to the task of Life. Next up might be Micropolis (SimCity) although that could be a bit daunting. Development platforms can be XP or OS X. Thanks all, David
I saw a lot of people asked about which language is better for us or which lanuage is better for money here and other places but I think it depends to you and your work and your country and your clinets we cant say that c++ is better or C# or vb and etc whats your favorite and your occupation? VB is easy C# is powerful and c++ is very powerful and hard (because I know it :-D ).
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I don't want to start a religious war here or have to wade through a history of computer languages. I would have posted on /. for that! My 15 year old son (ninth grade) wants me to teach him programming. I don't want to traumatize him with assembler -- dealing with me should be sufficient. What would be a good first language to use? We both think a barebones implementation of Life (John Conway's ...) could be a good first project. Source code should be available in virtually every language for every possible platform. He's looked at Scratch and MindStorms. He thinks they are too simplistic and wants something that is deeper. (I know MindStorms has C++, etc., but the Lego platform isn't inspiring him.). And, I don't even know if either Scratch or MindStorms is up to the task of Life. Next up might be Micropolis (SimCity) although that could be a bit daunting. Development platforms can be XP or OS X. Thanks all, David
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I'm personally not so sure about c# - if only because of : a) the CaSe SensitiVity It isn't intuituitive that Fred != fred b) the curly bracket syndrome It is scary for kids to be confronted with something full of symbols they don't understand. (unless it's graffitti in which case they seem to revel in symbols I don't understand!) While not a great fan, I have found that VB .Net is 'less confronting' to kids than c#
Take a chill pill, Daddy-o .\\axxx (That's an 'M')
These are the reason I liked teaching people Delphi back in the mid-late 90s. Verbosity helps people get both what is happening and strictness keeps them honest for future languages.
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i would vote VB or Object Pascal for a first syntax to learn, i learnt to code with Delphi a long time ago was a useful begining.
Amen! Finally someone suggested the original alter of Anders. I learned to program first with basic on a trash 80 in jr high, but didn't get hooked until learning Turbo Pascal in high school.
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I don't want to start a religious war here or have to wade through a history of computer languages. I would have posted on /. for that! My 15 year old son (ninth grade) wants me to teach him programming. I don't want to traumatize him with assembler -- dealing with me should be sufficient. What would be a good first language to use? We both think a barebones implementation of Life (John Conway's ...) could be a good first project. Source code should be available in virtually every language for every possible platform. He's looked at Scratch and MindStorms. He thinks they are too simplistic and wants something that is deeper. (I know MindStorms has C++, etc., but the Lego platform isn't inspiring him.). And, I don't even know if either Scratch or MindStorms is up to the task of Life. Next up might be Micropolis (SimCity) although that could be a bit daunting. Development platforms can be XP or OS X. Thanks all, David
Considering that I myself have programmed in virtually every language that any poster has mentioned, I would personally also recommend C# I have personally watched many a potentially brilliant programmer become useless because they were taught with VB. Not saying there is anything wrong with VB. I think it's a great language actually, but not for learning... Let me explain 1) Case insensitivity - This is the biggest problem with this language. It makes programmers lazy. Period. :( Once they have gotten use to not having to type in the correct case, any chances of them ever moving on to another language is lost. 2) Not having to declare variables - I have this same gripe with Java. Once you get into the habit of not declaring your variables, you get into the habit of forgetting that your data is actually represented in a certain way on the PC, and then you learn even less of how your computer actually works. 3) Syntax lessness - I know that's not a word, but you know what I mean. The semi-colon in coding is a big thing. And if it wasn't, the most used languages in the world would have gotten rid of it already a long time ago. I have had many a VB programmer give up on learning other languages because they had to put a semi-colon at the end of statements. In short, I recommend C#(or a C based language) simply because it teaches good programming practices. After that, any programming language is good, because you understand whats going on. I myself do programming in PHP, Java, and VB on a regular basis for work projects, and they are perfect for some of the projects, so nobody has to jump down my throat that I am bad mouthing VB,(insert other language of choice...) Just my 0.02c ;P
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I don't want to start a religious war here or have to wade through a history of computer languages. I would have posted on /. for that! My 15 year old son (ninth grade) wants me to teach him programming. I don't want to traumatize him with assembler -- dealing with me should be sufficient. What would be a good first language to use? We both think a barebones implementation of Life (John Conway's ...) could be a good first project. Source code should be available in virtually every language for every possible platform. He's looked at Scratch and MindStorms. He thinks they are too simplistic and wants something that is deeper. (I know MindStorms has C++, etc., but the Lego platform isn't inspiring him.). And, I don't even know if either Scratch or MindStorms is up to the task of Life. Next up might be Micropolis (SimCity) although that could be a bit daunting. Development platforms can be XP or OS X. Thanks all, David
Ruby (www.ruby-lang.org)? It's immensely powerful, lots of libraries that are easy to install with a single command, and it (the language and it's community to be precise) focuses on readability and good practices. A friend of mine has a nice experience of using it to automate tests of a large (10M members) social network site. She was assigned with a test of testing things manually; fortunatelly, her boyfriend is a software developer. It took just a few quick lessons and she's now writing her own tests (no programming background whatsoever). Just my $0.02 MB
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I don't want to start a religious war here or have to wade through a history of computer languages. I would have posted on /. for that! My 15 year old son (ninth grade) wants me to teach him programming. I don't want to traumatize him with assembler -- dealing with me should be sufficient. What would be a good first language to use? We both think a barebones implementation of Life (John Conway's ...) could be a good first project. Source code should be available in virtually every language for every possible platform. He's looked at Scratch and MindStorms. He thinks they are too simplistic and wants something that is deeper. (I know MindStorms has C++, etc., but the Lego platform isn't inspiring him.). And, I don't even know if either Scratch or MindStorms is up to the task of Life. Next up might be Micropolis (SimCity) although that could be a bit daunting. Development platforms can be XP or OS X. Thanks all, David
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COnsidering I'm 20 and learned my first computer language in high school by taking a community college class. I think VB.NET is the way to go. I eventually took courses in C, C++, and C# and think VB.NET is the best. I've worked (and still work) in research and corporate and realized that knwoing the .NET framework is very very important. Your son will enjoy the idea of easily building a user interface and the intelliSense will help him in learning. Plus, chicks dig guys who know .NET. -Max
I don't know if people understand what technology is all about:mad:. Surely assembler, C or any other low level language is not the way to understand the computer - is just that people often refuse the change and get stuck deep inside the computer chips. I can see a lot of purist :suss: trying to lure a 15 years old kid into joining their outdated and self proclaimed groups:mad:. To teach a kid any language developed in the 80's is like denying him an ipod and give him a cd player. Let the kid have fun :) with programming he still have homeworks to do. Give him the simplest of any language. i will suggest anything that has nothing to do with low level maching code:mad:. Almost all new languages addresses the concepts of datatypes, functions and objects :-D . Thats all he need to know in order to be able to tackle pointers, binary, octal & hexadecimal numbers later in life. Don't impose things on this kid:mad:. Only a teacher can device a simpler way of explaining something as huge as computer programming.
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I don't want to start a religious war here or have to wade through a history of computer languages. I would have posted on /. for that! My 15 year old son (ninth grade) wants me to teach him programming. I don't want to traumatize him with assembler -- dealing with me should be sufficient. What would be a good first language to use? We both think a barebones implementation of Life (John Conway's ...) could be a good first project. Source code should be available in virtually every language for every possible platform. He's looked at Scratch and MindStorms. He thinks they are too simplistic and wants something that is deeper. (I know MindStorms has C++, etc., but the Lego platform isn't inspiring him.). And, I don't even know if either Scratch or MindStorms is up to the task of Life. Next up might be Micropolis (SimCity) although that could be a bit daunting. Development platforms can be XP or OS X. Thanks all, David
Dear Mr: PASCAL language is the best language for teaching programming. the PASCAL was design for teaching purpose. Regards Computer Teacher.
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I don't want to start a religious war here or have to wade through a history of computer languages. I would have posted on /. for that! My 15 year old son (ninth grade) wants me to teach him programming. I don't want to traumatize him with assembler -- dealing with me should be sufficient. What would be a good first language to use? We both think a barebones implementation of Life (John Conway's ...) could be a good first project. Source code should be available in virtually every language for every possible platform. He's looked at Scratch and MindStorms. He thinks they are too simplistic and wants something that is deeper. (I know MindStorms has C++, etc., but the Lego platform isn't inspiring him.). And, I don't even know if either Scratch or MindStorms is up to the task of Life. Next up might be Micropolis (SimCity) although that could be a bit daunting. Development platforms can be XP or OS X. Thanks all, David
6 years ago at my high school they were teaching C++ as the first language, and I very liked it. However, I became sick the day that my teacher taught OOP, and was somewhat lost for a while when I came back to school. I think my university had it right--which taught Java. It is more straight forward and less ambiguous than how C++ can be, and it (painlessly?) instills the following good programming practices that are seen in many languages: -straight forward OOP (no extra .h header files reqired, like in C++, etc) -reference vs. value -case sensitivity awareness (i.e. VB can sometimes mislead the beginner in when this matters) -great FREE IDEs out there (netbeans, eclipse) ...many more
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I'm personally not so sure about c# - if only because of : a) the CaSe SensitiVity It isn't intuituitive that Fred != fred b) the curly bracket syndrome It is scary for kids to be confronted with something full of symbols they don't understand. (unless it's graffitti in which case they seem to revel in symbols I don't understand!) While not a great fan, I have found that VB .Net is 'less confronting' to kids than c#
Take a chill pill, Daddy-o .\\axxx (That's an 'M')
Sorry, but I couldn't disagree more! a) Typing skills are already deteriorating at unholy speed in online chats or online game worlds, not to mention game and other forums. I'd rather teach a kid to properly type than teach him to consider it an afterthought! If he is bothered by case, then he can still choose to type everything lowercase and see how far it takes him - it would be his choice however, not yours! b) What problem is there with curly brackets? If your keyboard requires more than two keys to press to get one typed, get another keyboard! Else it is no more difficult to handle than any uppercase character, or plain braces for that matter! Why would curly brackets be scary symbols? Maybe you view them so, I certainly don't, and don't even remember being at odds with these when I started programming. Of course, my first programming language (Pascal) already used them, so I don't know how scary these can be to someone starting out with a language that doesn't - one more reason to avoid such a language IMHO. Why 'less confronting' is an argument for any language as a starting language I don't get either. VB is certainly a lot better than previous dialects of BASIC, but it still inherited a lot of stuff that promotes bad programming style. It is easily possible to write a splendid piece of clean software using VB, but the language itself doesn't lead you to it, doesn't force you to it, even when the teacher isn't looking. In my eyes, the more restrictive a language is, the more likely the programmer will try to understand the concepts behind a language, or any programming language for that matter. The less restrictive it is, the less the programmer will care to understand how it works, because he doesn't need to! In short, if your kid wants to learn Visual Basic, teach him Visual Basic. If he wants to learn programming, teach him just about anything else but!
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StevenWalsh wrote:
I wish I had started with assembler.
Speaking as one who started on 6502 assembler, hand-written in a notebook, converted to hex and entered a byte at a time, you really need to be keen to persist!
Take a chill pill, Daddy-o .\\axxx (That's an 'M')
I strongly advise against assembler. It lacks the structure of higher languages and without knowing how to properly design and structure a system you won't really learn a lot by mastering assembler! Assembler was my second language (after Pascal, and before Basic, and I know what I'm talking about - I'd never had been able to write an assembler program longer than a few hundred lines without the knowledge to properly design it first!
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I don't want to start a religious war here or have to wade through a history of computer languages. I would have posted on /. for that! My 15 year old son (ninth grade) wants me to teach him programming. I don't want to traumatize him with assembler -- dealing with me should be sufficient. What would be a good first language to use? We both think a barebones implementation of Life (John Conway's ...) could be a good first project. Source code should be available in virtually every language for every possible platform. He's looked at Scratch and MindStorms. He thinks they are too simplistic and wants something that is deeper. (I know MindStorms has C++, etc., but the Lego platform isn't inspiring him.). And, I don't even know if either Scratch or MindStorms is up to the task of Life. Next up might be Micropolis (SimCity) although that could be a bit daunting. Development platforms can be XP or OS X. Thanks all, David
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Sorry, but I couldn't disagree more! a) Typing skills are already deteriorating at unholy speed in online chats or online game worlds, not to mention game and other forums. I'd rather teach a kid to properly type than teach him to consider it an afterthought! If he is bothered by case, then he can still choose to type everything lowercase and see how far it takes him - it would be his choice however, not yours! b) What problem is there with curly brackets? If your keyboard requires more than two keys to press to get one typed, get another keyboard! Else it is no more difficult to handle than any uppercase character, or plain braces for that matter! Why would curly brackets be scary symbols? Maybe you view them so, I certainly don't, and don't even remember being at odds with these when I started programming. Of course, my first programming language (Pascal) already used them, so I don't know how scary these can be to someone starting out with a language that doesn't - one more reason to avoid such a language IMHO. Why 'less confronting' is an argument for any language as a starting language I don't get either. VB is certainly a lot better than previous dialects of BASIC, but it still inherited a lot of stuff that promotes bad programming style. It is easily possible to write a splendid piece of clean software using VB, but the language itself doesn't lead you to it, doesn't force you to it, even when the teacher isn't looking. In my eyes, the more restrictive a language is, the more likely the programmer will try to understand the concepts behind a language, or any programming language for that matter. The less restrictive it is, the less the programmer will care to understand how it works, because he doesn't need to! In short, if your kid wants to learn Visual Basic, teach him Visual Basic. If he wants to learn programming, teach him just about anything else but!
Wow! Consider this response my alternative to a 1 vote: Just how out of touch are you with the concept of a kid learning something new for the first time? By your logic instead of giving children coloured blocks with letters on them we should be teaching them grammar instead. People have to get an *interest* in something to learn it, hitting them over the head with a lot of fussy details is exactly the right way to get someone to *not* be interested in learning to program. Typing skills? Who cares? If they are bitten by the bug and interested enough then you don't even need a teacher at that point, they'll learn everything they need to know on their own. I didn't even have a computer when I first learned to program, I found a good book on the topic, got interested and wrote many programs in a notebook by hand until I got my hand on a computer for the first time many months later.
"It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it." -Sam Levenson
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I don't want to start a religious war here or have to wade through a history of computer languages. I would have posted on /. for that! My 15 year old son (ninth grade) wants me to teach him programming. I don't want to traumatize him with assembler -- dealing with me should be sufficient. What would be a good first language to use? We both think a barebones implementation of Life (John Conway's ...) could be a good first project. Source code should be available in virtually every language for every possible platform. He's looked at Scratch and MindStorms. He thinks they are too simplistic and wants something that is deeper. (I know MindStorms has C++, etc., but the Lego platform isn't inspiring him.). And, I don't even know if either Scratch or MindStorms is up to the task of Life. Next up might be Micropolis (SimCity) although that could be a bit daunting. Development platforms can be XP or OS X. Thanks all, David
Programming is more of having the ability to break down a problem into the logical steps required to resolve it; the language one chooses to do so falls into mere personal tastebuds preference; a bad algorithm will s*ck on C, C++, Perl, Pascal, VB... even good ol' plain vanilla Basic, but a brilliant algorithm - the trademark of a GOOD programmer, will shine regardless of the platform chosen to implement it. In the interest of keeping things simple enough to concentrate on the problem solving rather than strict syntax, perhaps VB is a good choice to start working on.
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I don't want to start a religious war here or have to wade through a history of computer languages. I would have posted on /. for that! My 15 year old son (ninth grade) wants me to teach him programming. I don't want to traumatize him with assembler -- dealing with me should be sufficient. What would be a good first language to use? We both think a barebones implementation of Life (John Conway's ...) could be a good first project. Source code should be available in virtually every language for every possible platform. He's looked at Scratch and MindStorms. He thinks they are too simplistic and wants something that is deeper. (I know MindStorms has C++, etc., but the Lego platform isn't inspiring him.). And, I don't even know if either Scratch or MindStorms is up to the task of Life. Next up might be Micropolis (SimCity) although that could be a bit daunting. Development platforms can be XP or OS X. Thanks all, David
D Programming Language. It's very good. Someone wrote a "Life" in it. You can find information at www.digitalmars.com/d and www.dsource.org/projects. I also recommend using the Alternative Standard Library Tango found at dsource at www.dsource.org/projects/tango. It will make learning and creating stuff a lot easier and has lot's more features (threading for example) than Phobos. Lester L. Martin II