I have two interns here today. They are 16 year olds, and have not done any programming before. I introduced them to the basics of Pascal this morning, and now they're having a good time in the office next door. They are playing with canvas-demos in Smart and I hear "Hey, If X is greater than this value, lets try to spin it around the other way.", and "Aha, look at that!", and "Let's try to tweak the colors!!" etc etc.

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I have two interns here today. They are 16 year olds, and have not done any programming before. I introduced them to the basics of Pascal this morning, and now they're having a good time in the office next door. They are playing with canvas-demos in Smart and I hear "Hey, If X is greater than this value, lets try to spin it around the other way.", and "Aha, look at that!", and "Let's try to tweak the colors!!" etc etc.

I bet you all remember the good exploration moments when learning Pascal?

I look forward to introduce them to "everything" I know about sound software engineering over the next year!

Comments

  1. Lars FosdalSeptember 26, 2013 at 6:11 AM

    At least they are in capable hands!

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  2. Dorin DuminicaSeptember 26, 2013 at 6:12 AM

    oh yea', exploring is wonderful!

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  3. Bill MeyerSeptember 26, 2013 at 6:12 AM

    Dorin Duminica More so when it's not driven by some annoying defect. ;)

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  4. Jørn Einar AngeltveitSeptember 26, 2013 at 6:17 AM

    Lars Fosdal .  Oh. We'll have to see about that.  Perhaps I ruin them for life! ;-P

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  5. Warren PostmaSeptember 26, 2013 at 6:18 AM

    Defect Driven Development. 99% of Delphi developer's working lives, in a nutshell. :-)

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  6. Bill MeyerSeptember 26, 2013 at 6:29 AM

    But do give proper credit to the many vendors who make those lives such fun. ;)

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  7. Bill MeyerSeptember 26, 2013 at 6:39 AM

    Jørn Einar Angeltveit No, irreversible damage results only from exposure to BASIC, ;)

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  8. Lars FosdalSeptember 26, 2013 at 6:42 AM

    Bill Meyer 
    10 print "Visual Basic, not original BASIC"
    20 goto 10

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  9. Jørn Einar AngeltveitSeptember 26, 2013 at 6:52 AM

    Bill Meyer: Haha.  Yes, that's true!

    I had forgotten that great quote from Dijkstra:

    "It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration."
    (http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/e/edsgerdijk201164.html)

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  10. Jørn Einar AngeltveitSeptember 26, 2013 at 6:54 AM

    I would also agree that C64 basic has done more good than harm, Lars Fosdal !

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  11. Bill MeyerSeptember 26, 2013 at 7:05 AM

    Jørn Einar Angeltveit Also note that the available articles (from google) which appear to refute Dijkstra all seem to have been written by people whose first programming language was some variant of BASIC.

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  12. Asbjørn HeidSeptember 26, 2013 at 1:11 PM

    At least they have a mentor. I had nobody but the F1 key for the first few years. Took me a week to discover and figure out how to loop. Good times :-)

    ReplyDelete

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