Re: PERL as a first programming language?

Jack Campin (jack@cee.hw.ac.uk)
Sat, 30 Jul 1994 16:54:40 GMT

rsanders@mindspring.com (Robert Sanders) wrote:
>> I haven't had a chance to teach our intro class with it yet, but I think
>> a language like "abc" is closer to what I want there than C++ (or Perl).
>> Significant features include:
>> * It's interpreted
>> * It uses a syntax-directed editor -- the student cannot enter a
>> syntactically-incorrect program
> He cannot enter one at all? Or does it just become very obvious by
> bizarre indentation? I can't live without my Emacs modes for any of
> the languages I use. Syntax-directed editors are a must.

The structure editor is why I gave up on ABC. I was trying to use it on
the Mac, where the editor is tightly coupled to the interpreter (you can't
use an editor of your own choice). It's essentially write-only;
reorganizing existing code is so painful you'd better get it right first
time, and nothing works anything like the usual Mac user interface. This
approach was presumably dictated by the pedagogical aims of ABC (teaching
programming by refinement) - those aims are even less compatible with the
language being useful as a practical tool than the aims of Pascal were. I
can't see anybody using Mac ABC for any program longer than a page or that
they were going to keep for more than a week.

Pity, because the Mac needs a simple, readable, interpreted language for
writing small file-processing programs. ABC could easily have been it if
it hadn't been for this appalling user interface.

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