Re: Euphoria as first language to teach programming
- Posted by _tom (admin) Jun 26, 2017
- 1403 views
After trying Euphoria for a few days, it seems to me to be an ideal language for teaching programming to beginners. It is similar to Pascal & C, traditionally used for teaching. It also has interpreter mode similar to BASIC, which is usually used with beginners.
It is simple and at the same time safer than C. The concepts of procedures, functions, variables, include files, loops (for, while), conditional statements (if-then-elsif-else, switch) etc are clearly seen in this language.
I think Euphoria can be promoted as an ideal language for beginners, including kids, who are starting to learn programming.
<rant>
University bureaucrats choose what they think is marketable--professors get to invent a language. (BASIC, Pascal, Scheme, Python, ...) Industrial bureaucrats choose an in-house language and tell us to use it (.NET, Swift, Java). A bureaucrat at a publishing house chooses a language (based on the above) and we try to learn said language. Bureaucrats are not interested in what works best.
The ideal teaching language:
- has lots of content for teachers to discuss (does not have to be small)
- is fashionable (OOP languages are fashionable)
- has some surprises that you test on exams (like weird syntax)
- friendly is not important (you must toughen up the students)
- flexibility is not important (you are not producing applications)
- speed is not important (this is teaching not programming)
- thinking about what works better? (interferes with the teaching process)
- successful teaching languages become industrial languages (we learn industrial languages because they are successful)
The ideal learning language:
- OpenEuphoria
- Phix
You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink.
Friendly | Flexible | Fast
Simpler is better
One by one, we convince programmers that OpenEuphoria and Phix are better; several millions to go.
</rant>
_tom
