Beginning

martin_helm · November 22, 2010, 3:45pm

Carlos E. R. wrote:

>
> Pascal was designed to teach programming, Python was not. So yes, my
> advice is also to learn pascal first, with a teacher.
>
This is an argument but not a good one, because it is not important with
which intention a programming language was developed but to which degree it
fits for something.
Look at the computer scientists at MIT who used in earlier days scheme for
introductory classes (which is a really nice choice from my point of view
and IMHO a much better one than pascal) but switched a few years ago to
python.
From my own experience (pascal was the second language I learnt at
university short after learning fortran) it is a tedious language which
gives you not much and I learnt modula 2 on my own. Note that this is IMHO
and your experience my be different therefore I said:

>What is good for one person maybe a tedious and error prone way for
>another person

Pascal is like a dead language, I compare it with learning latin or ancient
greek (which has its benefits but it does not give you the ability to travel
to italy or greece and speak to the people there).
Since programmming languages are simply tools I always vote for something
which helps you to get the job done.

robin_listas · November 22, 2010, 10:24pm

On 2010-11-22 15:45, martin_helm wrote:
> Carlos E. R. wrote:
>
>>
>> Pascal was designed to teach programming, Python was not. So yes, my
>> advice is also to learn pascal first, with a teacher.
>>
> This is an argument but not a good one, because it is not important with
> which intention a programming language was developed but to which degree it
> fits for something.

Well, IMO, it is a good language to learn techniques.

> Pascal is like a dead language, I compare it with learning latin or ancient
> greek (which has its benefits but it does not give you the ability to travel
> to italy or greece and speak to the people there).

It is not dead. It is minoritary, certainly, as many others, but not dead.

And Latin is still taught >:-)

> Since programmming languages are simply tools I always vote for something
> which helps you to get the job done.
>

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)

martin_helm · November 22, 2010, 11:36pm

Carlos your arguments for pascal sound a bit like my own arguments for the
lisp language family and modern fortran dialects elsewhere - so I give up (I
like both of them and still program in both of them).

To help th OP, can you provide a few hints to him/her which pascal compiler
to use and where to start, at the end the OP has to decide what fits the
needs? I guess in some parts of the world it is difficult to find a teacher
for pascal, so tutorials might help.

For opensuse I only know about fpc as compiler and lazarus as ide in

http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Education/openSUSE_11.3

(last time I wrote something with free pascal was maybe around 2000, so I do
not know if it is still good and I do not know anything about lazarus).

And this tutorial which assumes no previous knowledge
http://www.taoyue.com/tutorials/pascal/
and
http://wiki.freepascal.org/

Btw.: I also had to learn latin long long ago.

robin_listas · November 23, 2010, 2:16am

On 2010-11-22 23:36, martin_helm wrote:
> Carlos your arguments for pascal sound a bit like my own arguments for the
> lisp language family and modern fortran dialects elsewhere - so I give up (I
> like both of them and still program in both of them).
>

> To help th OP, can you provide a few hints to him/her which pascal compiler
> to use and where to start, at the end the OP has to decide what fits the
> needs? I guess in some parts of the world it is difficult to find a teacher
> for pascal, so tutorials might help.

Not really, because I don’t believe in self-learning a programming language
as first time. Any language. Yes, you can learn to do programs, but there
is no substitute for a teacher correcting errors, misconceptions, and
providing guidance… and it is up to the teacher to choose language and tools.

Once you know one language and the techniques, you can learn others more
easily on your own (or not, perhaps you confuse them. I do).

I strongly believe the first time you learn, the foundation, has to be with
a teacher (it could be, perhaps, a remote one, dunno). And what you learn
will depend on what you can get.

I first learned Basic. Partly on my own, partly with some (few) classes.
Ah, no, before that I learned to program a TI57 calculator (and a TI58 - I
think). But I really learned programming when I had a long pascal course at
a university. That was clarifying. Love at first sight. Later I learned C
on another course (and assembler on a longer one) - but I think my pascal
background shows in my C programming. My C teacher stressed a lot the
shortcomings and dangers of C, so that I’m very careful and structured when
I write C. Or was… I have seldom programmed in C for a long time, my
skills are rusty.

> For opensuse I only know about fpc as compiler and lazarus as ide in

Any of those… it doesn’t matter, because the basics are learning loops,
functions, branching, recursions, data types, pointers, arrays… not cool
interfaces.

> http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Education/openSUSE_11.3
>
> (last time I wrote something with free pascal was maybe around 2000, so I do
> not know if it is still good and I do not know anything about lazarus).

Lazarus is very good. It has some rough edges, there are things it could do
but it doesn’t… (like opening a file larger than 4 gigs).

>
> And this tutorial which assumes no previous knowledge
> http://www.taoyue.com/tutorials/pascal/
> and
> http://wiki.freepascal.org/
>
> Btw.: I also had to learn latin long long ago.

Et tu quoque? X’-)

(no, that’s something I prefer forgotten. I had a very bad teacher, and
needed a friend and teacher to climb that wall).

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)

prhunt · November 23, 2010, 6:59am

Maybe something like this should be compulsory reading…

Amazon.com: Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs (Prentice-Hall Series in Automatic Computation) (9780130224187): Niklaus Wirth: Books

because I think it is useful to get a handle on what programming is before actually trying to do it. (and to keep Carlos happy, the examples in that book are in Pascal ;))

Paul

stamostolias · November 23, 2010, 11:58am

If you learn techniques of pascal’s language, the whim of this language, and generally learn it by doing exercises, you will have laid solid foundations in order to learn and other programming languages.

martin_helm · November 23, 2010, 2:01pm

stamostolias wrote:

>
> If you learn techniques of pascal’s language, the whim of this language,
> and generally learn it by doing exercises, you will have laid solid
> foundations in order to learn and other programming languages.
>
At least the imperative ones.

To add some additional reading (very short) just to make clear that
programming is not a task to be done in 21 days as some books promise (of
course not the ones mentioned here) is “Teach Yourself Programming in Ten
Years” from peter Norvig

http://norvig.com/21-days.html

And a good book on programming for beginners in general is “How to Design
Programs” by Felleisen et al. (but it uses the lisp dialect scheme for the
examples which is for some people very annoying).
http://www.htdp.org/

ken_yap · November 23, 2010, 2:08pm

Or, to be more cynical, you will be more appreciative of other languages after you have got out of (standard) Pascal’s straitjacket.

stamostolias · November 23, 2010, 9:16pm

Because in Hellas is the first programming language which you must learn. When you learn it very well you continue to the next programming language which is c & c++ and then you continue to Fortran.

gropiuskalle · November 23, 2010, 9:29pm

Because in Hellas is the first programming language which you must learn.

In what way is this of any relevance for the OP or this topic?

robin_listas · November 24, 2010, 2:30am

On 2010-11-23 07:06, prhunt wrote:
>
> Maybe something like this should be compulsory reading…
>
> ‘Amazon.com: Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs (Prentice-Hall
> Series in Automatic Computation) (9780130224187): Niklaus Wirth: Books’
> (http://tinyurl.com/yw7tgo)
>
> because I think it is useful to get a handle on what programming is
> before actually trying to do it. (and to keep Carlos happy, the
> examples in that book are in Pascal ;))

I know, I keep it, it was the one I learnt with

(I was afraid to suggest it myself, lest you thought me an oldie :-p )

I believe he wrote another one using modula :-?

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)

rasselzzz · August 5, 2011, 3:48pm

I would suggest VB cuz its the programming language for kids( i mean its easy very easy to learn) but sinds we are on opensuse forum and not windows, looks like u wont be able use VB, well after VB i would say the easy way to learn how to make games or something else is Delphi, u can use delphi by downloading and installing Lazarus.

after lookup in google for tutorials, i must say there are meny tutorial that u can learn in a few hours, im sure if u are really wants to learn programming u shold be able after few hours at least have some background pic, and some moving object GL

rassel