On Thu, Jan 02, 2003 at 10:03:57AM -0600, Steven Lembark wrote: > > > While I agree that those reasons count against Perl being used as a > > primary language of instruction, there's another, IMO, larger reason. > > It's the same reason why "Mastering Algorithms with Perl" fails. The > > language itself is too rich; you continually have to side-step from > > teaching formalisms to discuss syntax quirks, short-cuts, functions or > > yet another module. > > > > All these bells-and-whistles make that Perl is a great language, but that > > doesn't mean it's a good tool to teach programming or formalisms with. > > Java and C++ are equally convoluted. The fact that Perl > has the features doesn't mean that anyone has to teach > them. It's the difference between a Programming Intro > class and one on Perl Programming. > > Left to nothing but scalars, math, and simple I/O Perl > is less complicated than the standard teaching languages.
Yeah, but then you're excluding something basic as arrays. But once you introduce arrays, you got to deal with things like sigils and context. Which you don't have to deal with in Java, Pascal, or even C. If you want to dumb down Perl to something less complicated than say Java or Pascal, you're left with a language that's too bare bones to be useful. Abigail
