More Reason Not To Learn A Programming Language After All

[nemorathwald]

The Jargon Files has this to say about the programming language BASIC:
A programming language ... which for many years was the leading cause of brain damage in proto-hackers. ... It is practically impossible to teach good programming style to students that have had prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.
I learned basic on the Commodore 64 when I was a kid. I am so screwed.

Comments

[phecda.livejournal.com]

And after BASIC they taught students with Pascal. Now that was a step forward.

Having programmed in everything from assembler to project plans (*really* high level...), programming languages are like real human languages -- they demand that you adopt the mind set to properly communicate in that language. The mind set for assembler is radically different than the mind set for shell programming. Or LISP, or C++, or FORTRAN, or COBOL for that matter. This is why there are so many languages, because some bright spark thinks he or she has a new twist on the programming paradigm.

[stormgren.livejournal.com]

If you haven't touched it in a while, you're okay.

C is a good place to start to introduce some structure in your programming, stay away from perl otherwise. :)

[brendand.livejournal.com]

Well, I have programmed in BASIC, and while I haven't programmed in Many other languages, I did program in FORTRAN and C++. I found C++ more difficult to work with and FORTRAN pretty easy, but then, it's also more obsolete.

Point being, you're not screwed if you can simply forget everything you learned in BASIC. ;)

[ericthemage.livejournal.com]

I started with Atari basic, then went to Apple basic, 65C02 assembly, Visual Basic, SQL, C++, PHP, Java, and am looking at Python. Don't worry about it. :)