Name: Anonymous 2014-10-28 19:19
⑩. HTML and Javascript
It's better than PHP, but why on earth would you want to do this to a person? HTML isn't a programming language, so fuck right on off with that shit. JS isn't too bad as a document scripting language, but even there it's easy to push against the walls of what can be done safely. The only upside to it is that it is so ubiquitous that anyone with a computer sold since 1995 can jump in and fuck around with the basics of it. The downsides are far worse. Because web `developers' are retards, browsers do basically everything in their power to allow anything. The quality varies widely and no standard is really adhered to, except maybe in Opera, which no one uses precisely because it expects a perfect world and breaks everywhere. Also, the language is inconsistent to the point of insanity. What the fuck does
On the other hand, Brandon is a fag basher, so that's a few points in JS's favor.
Final Rating: 4.5/5
⑨. C++
Sepples could more accurately be called a family of languages that share syntax and a library. There's functional C, C with Classes, imperative C, Java with manual memory management, and plain C with better comments. The object-orientation is usually the least useful aspects of C++. You don't need those classes and objects. Get over yourself. Save time by not having them, use structs instead. Then you won't have to make a copy constructor, move constructor, copy assignment constructor, move assignment constructor, and a destructor just to make your program run better than dogshit just because the compiler likes to pass by value. On the other hand, it is useful to not pollute the namespace for every tiny function that operates on a type. This is made easier in C++, which allows member functions inside structures. Since C support is basically forgotten in most compilers, you'll end up having to compile most of it as C++ anyway.
Final Rating: 4.7/5
⑧. Java
Many programmers take issue with Java being used as a teaching language, and many of their complaints aren't unfounded. The typical study of Java starts with basic syntax, which would not too terrible for writing simple programs if it didn't include asinine formatting preferences as well. Moving on, the student continues into the basic study of classes and how Sun\Oracle\Circlejerking Ivory-tower Academics would like you to use them. The student is typically asked to write a simple class and have twenty different derived classes that override only the toString() function. After that, more bizarre class rituals that are made artificially complicated to disguise the fact that horrible design practices are being taught in place of real programming. After this, the student can expect to either move on to drawing smiley faces with Swing or File IO. Typically, the pretense that it is necessary to pollute the class hierarchy with Human->Employee->Doctor->Pediatrician->Surgeon->HeartSurgeon is dropped as soon as that section is over because the grader is tired of having to review 60 different files for what should be a 50 line program.
So if Java teaches stupid habits and has a tendency to destroy interest in programming with its own bureaucracy, why is it on this list? Because these are all good ENTERPRISE practices. Statistically speaking, most computer science graduates will be working there, so they'd better learn the jargon now. Additionally, Java makes it easy to make you look super-productive. No problem is too small to throw another class at, which, if done properly, gives hundreds of line of code more than doing it any practical way. If the student can't hack it in school, then they probably aren't going to be able to do it in an industry run by people who have no clue about programming. Then they won't find a job, then they will starve, then they will die. Or they might move back to their parents' house and watch anime for 12 hours a day until they die of heart failure.
Final Rating: 4.6/5
⑦. The language is irrelevant
As long as it is Turing complete, any student who really gives a shit will be able to learn something from it.
Final Rating: 4.99/5
⑥. x86 Assembly
On the internet lived a tranny named Cudder
Shilling for Intel was her bread and butter
There were no design choices too inane
Or complexity causing too much pain
For praises for her to not utter.
I don't actually know if Cudder would recommend IA to be taught to students as a first language, but I wanted to have a poem in here somewhere. It's a terrible idea though. Mastering assembly should definitely be on the to-do list of any aspiring programmer, but not for actually programming with. Assembly should be learned for the same reason as Haskell, because it will help you get a deeper understanding. While Haskell will give a more abstract view from computer science perspective, Assembly will give the programmer a valuable insight into the computer as a machine, and what is going on behind the scenes. Learning assembly is just as valuable as knowing how to build simply logic gates out of circuits. It will be fun and interesting, but will only be useful if you have some sort of background.
Final Rating: 4.83/5
⑤. Python
Not the worst choice in the world. The type system can be awkward at times, but less so than many others. Anything that was added to the language after the initial design is clunky and weird (lambda expressions, for instance). Also, FIOC. All in all, a language of mediocrity for mediocre programmers. But that's okay. It's easy to crank out and simple to read. It will be easy for a beginner to jump in and see the results of their experiments immediately.
Final Rating: 4.69/5
④. R
What? Why? Why would anyone need this, much less a beginner? Get fucked.
Final Rating: 4.1/5
③. Haskell
Haskell is a masturbatory language that attracts the sorts of people that get aroused by reading a math textbook. The entire language is designed to obstruct doing anything useful, and in many cases makes it impossible. But that's okay, because you can just use the impure facilities. Sure, it defeats the purpose of using Haskell in the first place, but fuck it, Monad is sexy.
BUT, it's actually not too bad to use for pedalogy. Unlike most languages, it doesn't tend towards code monkeyisms. If the student gains a good understanding of Haskell (and why certain things are the way they are), they will have a good platform on which to do interesting things, though hopefully in a different language. Be a man, use Scheme.
Final Rating: 4.5/5
②. BASIC
Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code. BASIC, from here on referred to as Basic, is basically a dead language. Many circlejerking academics and bloggers would tell of how Dijkstra proved that Basic was ruining students. Well they can go fuck themselves. Pretty much everything that they mention as a flaw they praise as wonderful in other languages. It's basically a bunch of idiots who know nothing jumping on the Dijkstra bandwagon to look like intellectuals. Well fuck Dijkstra. He was a self-important asshole who self-published his own quotes. He wasn't totally incorrect, Basic is inappropriate for building large, complex projects with many subcomponents in. But that's not what it was for, you fucking twat. It's right there in the fucking title, it is for beginners. And now that Basic is a pariah and Pascal has been forgotten, schools have no language designed for beginners, and they typically use Java instead. Was that really an improvement?
Final Rating: 4.75/5
①. Scheme
The former favored language of computer science. Scheme is a minimalistic language (or was, until R6RS) that is excellent for demonstrating computer science concepts. It was usually the first functional language that the student was ever exposed, so it was not learning Scheme itself that was the challenge (if learning Scheme syntax was a problem, you are an idiot), it was learning to think in processes from a mathematical prospective. It's not really used anymore though, and it can be hard to do anything `useful' with it. After using Scheme as a diaper for a while, the student should move to the Common Lisp for his big-boy potty training where he learns how to use all those cool techniques to do real things.
Final Rating: 4.9/5
It's better than PHP, but why on earth would you want to do this to a person? HTML isn't a programming language, so fuck right on off with that shit. JS isn't too bad as a document scripting language, but even there it's easy to push against the walls of what can be done safely. The only upside to it is that it is so ubiquitous that anyone with a computer sold since 1995 can jump in and fuck around with the basics of it. The downsides are far worse. Because web `developers' are retards, browsers do basically everything in their power to allow anything. The quality varies widely and no standard is really adhered to, except maybe in Opera, which no one uses precisely because it expects a perfect world and breaks everywhere. Also, the language is inconsistent to the point of insanity. What the fuck does
this do? I'll leave that up to you, but if you expected anything more than loosely connected to what it means in other languages, then you are wrong. And the scoping, what? On the other hand, Brandon is a fag basher, so that's a few points in JS's favor.
Final Rating: 4.5/5
⑨. C++
Sepples could more accurately be called a family of languages that share syntax and a library. There's functional C, C with Classes, imperative C, Java with manual memory management, and plain C with better comments. The object-orientation is usually the least useful aspects of C++. You don't need those classes and objects. Get over yourself. Save time by not having them, use structs instead. Then you won't have to make a copy constructor, move constructor, copy assignment constructor, move assignment constructor, and a destructor just to make your program run better than dogshit just because the compiler likes to pass by value. On the other hand, it is useful to not pollute the namespace for every tiny function that operates on a type. This is made easier in C++, which allows member functions inside structures. Since C support is basically forgotten in most compilers, you'll end up having to compile most of it as C++ anyway.
Final Rating: 4.7/5
⑧. Java
Many programmers take issue with Java being used as a teaching language, and many of their complaints aren't unfounded. The typical study of Java starts with basic syntax, which would not too terrible for writing simple programs if it didn't include asinine formatting preferences as well. Moving on, the student continues into the basic study of classes and how Sun\Oracle\Circlejerking Ivory-tower Academics would like you to use them. The student is typically asked to write a simple class and have twenty different derived classes that override only the toString() function. After that, more bizarre class rituals that are made artificially complicated to disguise the fact that horrible design practices are being taught in place of real programming. After this, the student can expect to either move on to drawing smiley faces with Swing or File IO. Typically, the pretense that it is necessary to pollute the class hierarchy with Human->Employee->Doctor->Pediatrician->Surgeon->HeartSurgeon is dropped as soon as that section is over because the grader is tired of having to review 60 different files for what should be a 50 line program.
So if Java teaches stupid habits and has a tendency to destroy interest in programming with its own bureaucracy, why is it on this list? Because these are all good ENTERPRISE practices. Statistically speaking, most computer science graduates will be working there, so they'd better learn the jargon now. Additionally, Java makes it easy to make you look super-productive. No problem is too small to throw another class at, which, if done properly, gives hundreds of line of code more than doing it any practical way. If the student can't hack it in school, then they probably aren't going to be able to do it in an industry run by people who have no clue about programming. Then they won't find a job, then they will starve, then they will die. Or they might move back to their parents' house and watch anime for 12 hours a day until they die of heart failure.
Final Rating: 4.6/5
⑦. The language is irrelevant
As long as it is Turing complete, any student who really gives a shit will be able to learn something from it.
Final Rating: 4.99/5
⑥. x86 Assembly
On the internet lived a tranny named Cudder
Shilling for Intel was her bread and butter
There were no design choices too inane
Or complexity causing too much pain
For praises for her to not utter.
I don't actually know if Cudder would recommend IA to be taught to students as a first language, but I wanted to have a poem in here somewhere. It's a terrible idea though. Mastering assembly should definitely be on the to-do list of any aspiring programmer, but not for actually programming with. Assembly should be learned for the same reason as Haskell, because it will help you get a deeper understanding. While Haskell will give a more abstract view from computer science perspective, Assembly will give the programmer a valuable insight into the computer as a machine, and what is going on behind the scenes. Learning assembly is just as valuable as knowing how to build simply logic gates out of circuits. It will be fun and interesting, but will only be useful if you have some sort of background.
Final Rating: 4.83/5
⑤. Python
Not the worst choice in the world. The type system can be awkward at times, but less so than many others. Anything that was added to the language after the initial design is clunky and weird (lambda expressions, for instance). Also, FIOC. All in all, a language of mediocrity for mediocre programmers. But that's okay. It's easy to crank out and simple to read. It will be easy for a beginner to jump in and see the results of their experiments immediately.
Final Rating: 4.69/5
④. R
What? Why? Why would anyone need this, much less a beginner? Get fucked.
Final Rating: 4.1/5
③. Haskell
Haskell is a masturbatory language that attracts the sorts of people that get aroused by reading a math textbook. The entire language is designed to obstruct doing anything useful, and in many cases makes it impossible. But that's okay, because you can just use the impure facilities. Sure, it defeats the purpose of using Haskell in the first place, but fuck it, Monad is sexy.
BUT, it's actually not too bad to use for pedalogy. Unlike most languages, it doesn't tend towards code monkeyisms. If the student gains a good understanding of Haskell (and why certain things are the way they are), they will have a good platform on which to do interesting things, though hopefully in a different language. Be a man, use Scheme.
Final Rating: 4.5/5
②. BASIC
Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code. BASIC, from here on referred to as Basic, is basically a dead language. Many circlejerking academics and bloggers would tell of how Dijkstra proved that Basic was ruining students. Well they can go fuck themselves. Pretty much everything that they mention as a flaw they praise as wonderful in other languages. It's basically a bunch of idiots who know nothing jumping on the Dijkstra bandwagon to look like intellectuals. Well fuck Dijkstra. He was a self-important asshole who self-published his own quotes. He wasn't totally incorrect, Basic is inappropriate for building large, complex projects with many subcomponents in. But that's not what it was for, you fucking twat. It's right there in the fucking title, it is for beginners. And now that Basic is a pariah and Pascal has been forgotten, schools have no language designed for beginners, and they typically use Java instead. Was that really an improvement?
Final Rating: 4.75/5
①. Scheme
The former favored language of computer science. Scheme is a minimalistic language (or was, until R6RS) that is excellent for demonstrating computer science concepts. It was usually the first functional language that the student was ever exposed, so it was not learning Scheme itself that was the challenge (if learning Scheme syntax was a problem, you are an idiot), it was learning to think in processes from a mathematical prospective. It's not really used anymore though, and it can be hard to do anything `useful' with it. After using Scheme as a diaper for a while, the student should move to the Common Lisp for his big-boy potty training where he learns how to use all those cool techniques to do real things.
Final Rating: 4.9/5