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- Path: sparky!uunet!haven.umd.edu!darwin.sura.net!wupost!sdd.hp.com!usc!news
- From: ajayshah@almaak.usc.edu (Ajay Shah)
- Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
- Subject: Re: Why should POINTERS be so damn hard to understand ?
- Date: 26 Aug 1992 11:58:44 -0700
- Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
- Lines: 30
- Sender: ajayshah@almaak.usc.edu (Ajay Shah)
- Message-ID: <l9nl34INNhln@almaak.usc.edu>
- References: <9208251159.AA04122@ult4> <1992Aug26.124652.9509@alw.nih.gov> <1992Aug26.183054.14146@newshub.ccs.yorku.ca>
- NNTP-Posting-Host: almaak.usc.edu
-
- tony@nexus.yorku.ca (Anthony Wallis) writes:
-
- >Jim Sullivan (sullivan@alw.nih.gov), in response to
- >> > When learning C, what things did you find the most
- >> > confusing/difficult to understand?
- >says
- >> What else?... POINTERS!
-
- >(This seems to be a common gripe from students subjected to that
- > Blaise-ing insult known as "Pascal" too.)
-
- On the contrary, I did a fortran --> basic --> pascal --> turbo pacal
- --> awk --> C route. I found that an Extremely crisp clarity
- with Pascal pointers was a great asset in quickly jumping into
- pointers with C.
-
- Most pascal students don't have time enough in a first course to
- really think about pointers. I think that is the real problem, not
- Pascal itself. (I never did classes in programming, so I can't really
- tell).
-
- IMHO Pascal is still the best first teaching language I can see.
- I would move on to C soon, but it's hard explaining C to someone
- who has never written programs before. If you have not laboured
- writing x = x + 1; thousands of times, you won't appreciate
- ++x and x++.
-
- -ans.
- --
- Ajay Shah, (213)749-8133, ajayshah@usc.edu
-