23 June, 2011

How Are Students Learning Programming ?

A recent ComputerWorld article "How are students learning programming in a post-Basic world ?" (It should be BASIC, not Basic) reminds me of the time I first learnt programming.
Yes, with BASIC. When there were very few PCs in Ahmedabad.




I learnt programming with BASIC. The credit goes to my elder brother, Santosh, who convinced me (against my self-doubts) that I could learn computer programming. And once I started, it was SO EASY (I topped the class).

Thank you , Santosh.





Here's a YABASIC program I wrote in 2007 to help my son solve a puzzle (and I don't remember the details of the puzzle) :



print "The problem of 3 daughters"
print "Find 3 numbers whose product equals the desired number"
input "What is the product of the 3 integers ?" productof3
DIM AM(productof3,4)
RN=1
FOR I =1 to productof3
IF INT(productof3/I) = (productof3/I) THEN
FOR J =1 to productof3
IF INT(productof3/J) = (productof3/J) THEN
For K = 1 to productof3
IF INT(productof3/K) = (productof3/K) THEN
# print "Testing ", I , J , K
DOESEXIST=0
IF (I * J * K) = productof3 THEN
# print "Possible Answer : ", I , J, K, " : With the Sum as : ", S\
FOR ARRCHK =1 to RN
S = I + J + K
IF ( (AM(ARRCHK,1)=S AND AM(ARRCHK,2)=I AND AM(ARRCHK,3)=J AND AM(ARRCHK,4)=K) OR (AM(ARRCHK,1)=S AND AM(ARRCHK,2)=I AND AM(ARRCHK,3)=K AND AM(ARRCHK,4)=J) OR (AM(ARRCHK,1)=S AND AM(ARRCHK,2)=J AND AM(ARRCHK,3)=I AND AM(ARRCHK,4)=K) OR (AM(ARRCHK,1)=S AND AM(ARRCHK,2)=J AND AM(ARRCHK,3)=K AND AM(ARRCHK,4)=I) OR (AM(ARRCHK,1)=S AND AM(ARRCHK,2)=K AND AM(ARRCHK,3)=I AND AM(ARRCHK,4)=J) OR (AM(ARRCHK,1)=S AND AM(ARRCHK,2)=K AND AM(ARRCHK,3)=J AND AM(ARRCHK,4)=I) ) THEN
# print ".............. Numbers ", I, J, K, " have already been checked"
DOESEXIST=1
BREAK
ENDIF
NEXT ARRCHK
IF DOESEXIST=0 THEN
AM(RN,1)=S
AM(RN,2)=I
AM(RN,3)=J
AM(RN,4)=K
print "Possible Answer : " , AM(RN,2), AM(RN,3), AM(RN,4) , " : With the sum : ", AM(RN,1)
ENDIF
RN = RN +1
ENDIF
ENDIF
NEXT K
ENDIF
NEXT J
ENDIF
NEXT I


Or an example of a program to test a number for whether it is a Prime (very simplistic, not using any of the algorithms -- like the Sieve of Eratosthenes that I used when I wrote a program in the BASIC class in 1985 -- or was it in 1984) :
print "hello world"
# Testing for Prime Numbers
#assign
presult=0
input "Which number ?" numtotest
print "You entered : " , numtotest
for I=2 to numtotest/2
IF (numtotest/I) = int(numtotest/I) THEN
# print "Testing division of ", numtotest, "by ", I , " : Is Not a Prime"
presult=1
BREAK
ELSE
# print "possibly a prime when testing division by ", I
ENDIF
NEXT I
clear screen
if presult=0 then
print colour("red","blue") numtotest, " IS A PRIME NUMBER !"
ELSE
print colour("green") numtotest, " is not a prime number !"
ENDIF
input "Enter to exit " mentr


I have also studied xBase (dBASEIII+), Pascal, C, C++ and Java (besides SQL and PL/SQL). Guess which language I dislike ? It is a 4 letter word.

UPDATE 01-Jul-11 : Here's an article by Joel Spolsky (albeit dated 29-Dec-05) : The Perils of JavaSchools.

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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

hello,
why you dislike it?

Joel Garry said...

I was fortunate to learn 5 other languages first, so I was more amenable to structured programming in my first paying job - learning DEC BASIC+ and BASIC+2 on the job, untangling the spaghetti.

word: stersa

Hemant K Chitale said...

Anonymous,
Why I dislike Java ?
Garbage Collection means that you can afford to be lazy about memory management.
Bytecodes and JVMs are slow. Java survived only because of processor advances by Intel.
Java code doesn't look neat.
Every time I see an error message from a Java program I puke. Completely meaningless messages.

Hemant