home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- Path: news1.ucsd.edu!usenet
- From: djohnson@tartarus.ucsd.edu (Darin Johnson)
- Newsgroups: comp.edu,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.c++
- Subject: Re: C or C++ for a 14-year old?
- Date: 09 Jan 1996 14:55:04 -0800
- Organization: UCSD Computer Science and Engineering Department
- Sender: djohnson@tartarus.ucsd.edu
- Message-ID: <qq91jhhtbr.fsf@tartarus.ucsd.edu>
- References: <4b30ld$lp2$1@mhafc.production.compuserve.com>
- <w31V7MD4ED1aLz3@dexam.another.gun.de>
- <dschrage.23.152EBB70@indirect.com>
- <4cq6cr$t51@dub-news-svc-1.compuserve.com> <4cqhu3$1quo@news.gate.net>
- <qq4tu6nr5t.fsf@tartarus.ucsd.edu> <4ct1e5$kpc@fountain.mindlink.net>
- NNTP-Posting-Host: tartarus.ucsd.edu
- In-reply-to: genew@mindlink.bc.ca's message of Tue, 09 Jan 1996 06:15:33 GMT
- X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.0
-
- genew@mindlink.bc.ca (Gene Wirchenko) writes:
- > for i=1 to 10 ::= for the cases of i from 1 to 10. English fits
- > just fine.
-
- I didn't understand it at the time though. It make sense in
- restrospect, because it's very commonly used in abstract
- mathematics.
-
- > It's easy? Well, then it's a pity you got it wrong. Try
- > incrementing i in your loop. Of course, a for-next loop handles that
- > for you.
-
- oops, big blush... Should a for statement be introduced first, only
- shown as a shortcut once the alternate methods are learned? Then
- again, in many early basic's, the for statement was the only
- structured construct there was.
-
- > Modern BASICs are very Pascal-like. Remember, this isn't the
- > seventies. Oh, yeah. Which language requires you to declare labels
- > which can only be numeric? Gimme a "p", gimme...
-
- Can you find a book on BASIC that teaches it this way? How about
- example BASIC programs the student can try to emulate?
-
- (as far as pascal labels, I needed to use them exactly once)
-
- > CARDIAC: "CARDboard Illustrative Aid to Computing". Me too! I'd
- > like to find one of the kits. If anyone knows, please let me know.
- > Did you ever figure out how to boot a program using CARDIAC? It took
- > me years to figure it out.
-
- No, I never got beyond doing simple math stuff (I didn't even know
- what the heck booting was - remember, this was the first computer
- I had ever used, I had seen a real one once though). Generally,
- I'd do a long sequence and end up adding the first two digits, then
- say "ah, I see the pattern" and mentally do the rest.
- --
- Darin Johnson
- djohnson@ucsd.edu -- Strange things are afoot at the circle-K...
-