Should everybody learn to program?
Once in a while I see these “everybody should learn how to program”-opinions and I want to shout “YES” and “NO” at the same time. Being a teacher in Computer Science I’ve taught many students how to program (actually I view it as I helped them learn themselves how to program). Most of these were studying Computer Science and usually either knew how to program (or at least they thought they knew how to program ) or were motivated to learn programming. But I’ve also taught students that did not study Computer Science and but were required to...
Read MoreDijkstra and PL/1
I have to admit that I’ve never had the pleasure to use PL/1 but I’ve seen it and I can understand Dijkstras opinion: Finally, although the subject is not a pleasant one, I must mention PL/1, a programming language for which the defining documentation is of a frightening size and complexity. Using PL/1 must be like flying a piano with 7,000 buttons, switches. and handles to manipulate in the cockpit. I absolutely fail to see how we can keep our growing programs firmly within our intellectual grip when by its sheer baroqueness the programming language – our basic tool, mind...
Read More