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What's the dumbest reason you've learned a programming language? (self.programming)

submitted 1 month ago by andioop to c/programming

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[–] SmartmanApps 18 points 1 month ago (28 children)

object-oriented (this is their FIRST proper programming language - they don't even know how to write loops yet and you want us to teach them OOP at the same time?! And as it turns out, I had one student who literally could NOT work out how to use a loop - kept writing 20 variables for 20 iterations. i.e. her variables never varied!)
variables are weakly-typed (use it for anything, whether it's what you first used it for or not, Python doesn't care)
indentation has to be exact (i.e. no brackets, just exact indentation). I had one student whose program wasn't working, and it even took ME a while to find what was wrong with it (a missing space).

I think there was more, but that's what I remember off the top of my head. If it was up to me then I would've used Pascal - that's what it's designed for! But at least C# has strongly-typed variables, and doesn't care about your indentation (and unfortunately there was no non-OOP language choice available - I'm not sure how this got in the curriculum when every teacher knows you only teach one concept at a time). As I said, many other teachers felt the same way, but couldn't get it past their school admin's.

[–] uthredii 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (7 children)

object oriented

Python does have OOP but you are not at all forced to use it. You can write code in a functional or even procedural style.

typing

I do hate that python doesent have proper support for typing but I think weakly typed variables will actually help beginners as it is less to think about to start off with.

indentation

I think there are pros and cons here. In other languages it is considered good style to use indentation anyway.

I'm sure it is difficult to teach a large class like that though. It was hard enough for me to learn with a much more favourable teacher to student ratio than you probably have. Sorry but honestly I do sympathise with admin as well.

[–] JackbyDev 5 points 1 month ago (5 children)

It's odd to me that you're disagreeing with their actual experience teaching.

[–] SmartmanApps 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Thanks. It's a very 21st Century phenomenon that I've unfortunately run into many times

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