It’s a big reason why I really dont like pseudocode as instruction to people learning the basics of what programming is. It made more sense 20 years ago when programming languages were on a whole a lot more esoteric and less plain text, but now with simple languages like Python there’s simply little reason to not just write Python code or whatever.

I took an intro to programming class in College and the single thing I got dinged on the most is “incorrect pseudocode”, which was either too formal and close to real code or too casual and close to plain English.

It’s not a great system. We really need to get rid of it as a practice

[–] [email protected] 22 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Especially since python is right there.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago (5 children)

I mean once you get beyond bash-like scripts python is esoteric as fuck, adding oop to what is essentially a shell is a terrible idea

That said, there's plenty of languages with good syntax that is still good when you get into more complex stuff (modern C#, scala, kotlin and more)

[–] [email protected] 11 points 8 months ago

The only thing esoteric about python is the bolted-on typing and anything behind a double underscore.

So yeah, it's there, but in front of the curtain it's practically pseudo code.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

I think you’re missing the forest for the trees here pretty heavily.

Yes, Python has some goofy aspects about managing it while performing high level, in depth tasks.

This is a post and a comment chain about pseudocode being taught to people who likely just learned what a “programming language” was several weeks ago. Essentially no one taking the GCSE knows what “bash-like scripts” even means.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I disagree. Python is not "esoteric" when making objects. The syntax is certainly easier than in Java.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

The syntax is certainly easier than Java

And VisualBasic's syntax is easier than COBOL, but this isn't a competition to make the least offensive heap of putrid garbage, so why does it matter?

Python works just fine for basic scripts, frankly it's amazing for it, but oop and functional programming is so incredibly obviously badly shoehorned in that huge swathes needs scrapping and version 4 releasing

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Then help me understand please. What do you mean by "esoteric" in regards to oop in Python compared to a language better suited for it?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago

What part(s) of python do you think is esoteric?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

Wut

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago

Reminds me of 7th grade math class, chapter on estimating. Assignment was "Estimate the following values" with problems like 42+28=? or 14*3=?

One of them was 6*7=? Which having memorized my times tables in 4th grade like they told me to, I knew off the top of my head that it's 42. I wrote that. And it was marked wrong because I was too precise.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

In the 90s my high school used Pascal. That seems reasonable if you only want to teach procedural