In post 1, Accountant wrote:Though for an absolute beginner you should start with C.
wat
Accountant, your crazy.
That said, I started really learning syntax in a language that did even have proper loops! (I'm not kidding -- You had to use goto to mimic loops and gosub to mimic functions except subroutines are a lot less flexible.)
I got a bit firmer grip though when I started learning JavaScript after convincing my parents to buy me a book on it.
Last edited by Ircher on Fri Jul 08, 2016 2:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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In post 12, Mina wrote:Also, my Mech. Eng. degree had a total of one required programming course, and they decided to divide the semester 50-50 between Fortran and C. The logic of whoever instated the curriculum was a mixture of "university is about TEACHING YOU HOW TO THINK SO THAT YOU CAN LEARN MORE EASILY IN THE FUTURE (from people who aren't us), not teaching useful, employable skills that might become obsolete someday, so we'll start with the hardest of the hard!" and "we've used Fortran since the 70s, and we'll be damned if we're gonna change, so let's train the next batch of potential grad student lackeys early."
C wasn't
so
bad for a beginner, though (with the caveat that we only learned as much as can be crammed into half a semester, so probably didn't get to the worst parts).
This course sounds like it was devised by satan himself.
Fortran? People still use fortran???
I honestly can't tell if this is a joke or not but I legitimately didn't think it was used at all anymore(*), let alone standard, let alone taught as if it's relevant in any way in regards to the future of programming(**).
(*I mean you always hear about places keeping old systems as they are because they don't feel a need to upgrade anything or can't for various reasons(/excuses), so they basically pass info down like generation to generation, even though it's downright silly, but apart from that... y'know)
(**something you'd teach to students AKA our future? seriously?)
Apparently, some aerospace engineering grad students had to use Fortran as research assistants at my university, which is a major reason it was on the curriculum.
I don't know if there are any actual advantages to using Fortran over another language to solve engineering problems, though. I suspected it's in use moreso because it's what researchers were exposed to growing up, and non-comp-sci professors don't want to learn a new programming language. Or does your neighbour know why, Claus?
But yeah, I don't think they cared in the slightest about preparing us for the future of programming. Only the students in mechanical and civil engineering took this course. The computer engineers were learning Java.
So, he is actually younger than me, and learned Fortran in grad school. He also works with python, C++ and Matlab, and is interested in learning other stuff. You use the best tool for the job: When there is a well stablished parallel linear algebra library that is already used and debugged by thousands of people worldwide, it is more efficient to learn Fortran and use that, than to build another library from scratch and have to worry about maintaining/debug TWO codebases (library and application). Also sometimes you just have to use what is available at the cluster. Also apparently Fortran is easier to debug than C++.
But that does not mean that we teach the kids Fortran. Undergrad classes are Python, C++ and Java (with a shift towards more and more python), and you learn whatever language it is that your lab is using (Ruby for the the webfolks, fortran for the high performance computing folks, python for the AI folks, C/Assembly for the robot folks, etc). Right tool for the job and all. I think anyone who says that "You must learn X language or else" is deluding themselves.
I know this was stated before, but however you start, run all your stuff from the command line. This is the best way to learn how languages work when you split your code between files.
