Common practice notwithstanding, in any teaching mission, the zeroeth directive is "don't bore the student". I think that rules out Pascal and Ada for much the same reasons - they are tedious, verbose languages. The Polish aunts of programming ;-)
As to strictness, in my experience*, compiler errors teach students to not err, but nothing about programming. Premature terminations, debug logs, wrong output - those are types of feedback that induce exploration. Daniel * A couple of years teaching programming to novices. Iftach Hyams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > >> Maybe this makes Fortran easier to start with, ... > > What is the mission ? Basic programming enough for "Bagroot" ? > Is so, Fortran can be enough. If the aim if good practice, > methodology and pragmatism, Fortran is considered 'ded'. > > For a procedural language - Pascal is fine. It encourage student to write > neat code (unlike 'C'). > If OO is an issue, the Ada is a good option : > * It is very strict with syntax and structure. > * It can imitate Pascal programs. > * It has readable OO capabilities. > * It encapsulation as a default. > * It hides OS specific API's (tasks, semaphores etc.). > * It has free compilers for students (GNAT, GCC > 3) for both > Windows and Linux. > * It is (very) well documented. > > > > > > > > > > > > This e-mail message has been sent by Elbit Systems Ltd. > and is for the use of the intended recipients only. > The message may contain privileged or confidential information . > If you are not the intended recipient you are hereby notified that any use, > distribution or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited, > and you are requested to delete the e-mail and any attachments > and notify the sender immediately. > > ================================================================= > To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with > the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command > echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
