[Melbourne-pm] perl, CGI and php questions

[Timothy S. Nelson]

On Tue, 26 Aug 2008, John Thornton wrote:

> Tim
>    That's interesting
>
>    The issue of a "best" programming language for the beginner to start off
> with is always a contentious area.
>
>    In the old HSC in Victoria [early to mid 80s before the VCE arrived] the
> math A/B subjects had a tutorial/command list of Pascal at the back of the
> math text book. I know this from fishing a math A/B book from a hop shop
> bin. I am NOT that old!!!!!

 	Neither am I, but I first learned Pascal in VCE :).

>    When I was at school there was a short computer unit where Basic was
> taught and I absolutely hated the language. All those Go to,If then
> things...to me they were so primitive and boring.

 	Agree, although I used it for 5 years in Primary/High school, I'd hate 
to now.  But Basic as it was originally conceived of wasn't as bad as Basic as 
it was actually implemented, so I tend to bag certain versions of basic (ie. 
GWBASIC) rather than Basic as a whole.

>    From what I have read Python is the most fashionable language for
> beginners to program with these days.

 	That doesn't surprise me.  At Uni, they started us on C.

> Basic is frowned upon for teaching
> beginners "bad habits" whatever they may be. But I will take Perl!

 	GOTO could be considered a bad habit.  GOTO is possible in many 
languages, but rarely useful (although I will admit to using it in C to 
simulate a switch statement when comparing strings :) ).  Another of the 
supposed bad habits was that it didn't require you to declare your variables. 
But that's like 90% of the scripting languages out there.

 	:)


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| Name: Tim Nelson                 | Because the Creator is,        |
| E-mail: wayland at wayland.id.au    | I am                           |
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