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On Wed 4 Feb 2004 2:22 pm, James Wonnacott wrote:
We were having a discussion on this topic today at the school where I work. Some of the students want to start to learn some programming:
What kind of skill level are we talking about?
we have staff willing to learn and want to know what language to use. As we have a system where most of our PCs will boot into Linux or windows I suggested using a C on Linux, however the question which arose was what help/ teach youself/getting started is there. I'm not a progammer myself and have no experience of using C but said I'd post on this list for any advice you could give. I'm trying to increase the use of Linux here and demonstrate its advantages so please, any help would be great.
From a personal point of view what started me learning programming was first learning how to make webpages WITHOUT a WYSIWYG editor (windows Notepad). Then I started doing a bit of BASIC (please don't teach this to them, it will teach them bad habits). I my favorite programming language is Java though because - It's good for beginners (and people with short attention span) because you can break the design task down into small pieces - it doesn't mess things up too badly if you get it wrong - Plus because it is compiled into bytecode it is mostly platform independant. (avoid using Microsofts Java VM as it contains non-standard extentions which will stop the program from working with other platforms) -You can get your students to make applets which they can display on the web. Seeing their work online will encourage them - The development kit is available for free download (linux version too) - Plenty of useful API Here has a good summary of what does what: http://www.helsinki.fi/~rvaranka/Computer/Linux/HOWTO/Languages.html a quote I saw: "With C it is easy to shoot yourself in the foot, with C++ it's harder but when you do it will blow your whole leg off!" I do not know how true this is because I'm only just learning C++. I have no experience of using C. -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG Mail majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe list" in the message body to unsubscribe.