Date: Fri, 03 Jul 1998 15:46:55 -0400 From: Mike Jeays <mike.jeays@statcan.ca> To: "Christopher R. Bowman" <crb@ChrisBowman.com> Cc: Eivind Eklund <eivind@yes.no>, "Dag-Erling Coidan =?iso-8859-1?Q?Sm=F8rgrav?=" <smoergrd@oslo.geco-prakla.slb.com>, FreeBSD Chat <chat@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: Beginning user's OS (was: Here is a really odd question!!!) Message-ID: <359D352E.D8E46E45@a.statcan.ca> References: <rx4ogv7gsne.fsf@oslo.geco-prakla.slb.com> <19980703010915.6825.qmail@hotmail.com> <19980703124514.H358@freebie.lemis.com> <19980703022310.B4457@zappo> <rx4n2ar1ja4.fsf@oslo.geco-prakla.slb.com> <19980703111031.39367@follo.net> <rx4ogv7gsne.fsf@oslo.geco-prakla.slb.com> <199807031824.NAA13738@quark.ChrisBowman.com>
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They would probably learn assembler as quickly as any of the 'regular' 3 GLs - once they get the idea of a register being a sort of pigeon-hole that you can put a number into, I think a bright child would make very rapid progress. Whether teaching them assembler would be a 'good thing' or not, I am reluctant to say... I agree that a language with a clean, regular syntax, and which enables the more skilled to progress to more advanced ideas, is ideal. I personally favour TK/TCL - the speed with which you can get real windowed applications running is almost without equal, and there is a smooth gradation from trying elementary statements to building complex windowed apps. But aren't we off topic - the original question was about OSs, not programming languages? I recently was visited by a nephew and niece (18 and 16 respectively) who have never seen a GUI other than Windows. I showed them my FreeBSD/fvwm setup, and they were able to use it easily, and of course found Netscape completely familiar. They seemed quite surprised there was anything other than Windows... Christopher R. Bowman wrote: > At 07:10 AM 7/3/98 , Eivind Eklund wrote: > >[snip] > > > >I'd use the same language to teach an 11-year-old as a 19+ year old. > >I'd preferably choose an interpreted language with fairly small and > >regular syntax; TCL, Scheme or Eiffel (the last only if I could run a > >'melting ice' environment) seem like good choices. > > > >[snip snip] > > Am I the only one who would teach people assembler as a first language, > especially young children who are so bright and learn so quickly that they > learn entire languages in a matter of a few years? > -------- > Christopher R. Bowman > crb@ChrisBowman.com > http://www.ChrisBowman.com/~crb > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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