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Signed-off-by: Matej Focko <me@mfocko.xyz> Signed-off-by: Matej Focko <mfocko@redhat.com>
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blog/2023-12-xx-first-language.md
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---
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title: First language for programming
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description: |
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Thinking about the issues that can arise from making a wrong choice for a
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first programming language.
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date: 2023-12-29
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authors:
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- key: mf
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title: a.k.a. passionate Python hater
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tags:
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- teaching
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- beginners
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hide_table_of_contents: false
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---
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I recall my first-time experience with programming quite vividly and also at the
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time of writing this post I have been teaching _Foundations of Programming_ for
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5 years already.
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Let's talk about the first language beginners come into contact with hands
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on[^1].
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:::caution Spoiler alert
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At one point or another, this post will turn into full-blown Python rant as it
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is the most common choice for the first language.
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:::
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## My journey
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:::info
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I'll start with my own journey, so you can take in account any bias that I have.
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:::
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I will describe my journey by taking two _very_ different paths, self-study and
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the high school experience. Self-study path begins just a year or two before the
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high school and majority of the time they overlap which certainly creates
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a unique experience.
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### Self-study
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My first time touching a proper programming language was around ‘11 and it was
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a VB.NET[^2]. If you have a look at this language, it is a rather verbose
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language. However if you understand English, it is very easy to read because of
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the said verbosity. When you dig deeper, you may find some very weird stuff
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going on, like indexing of arrays, or even allocating arrays that preallocates
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one more or one less[^3] element than the specified size. Syntax is also quite
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unusual with apostrophes marking the comments.
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Overall it's not that bad and the book I've had[^4] was rather nice. In
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retrospective I would say that VB.NET is very nice first language, because it's
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easy to write and read and yet is quite powerful.
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Next step in my journey was Java. I have followed the book _Java 7_ by
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_Herbert Schildt_. Java has been with me for a long time. I have to admit that
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I've been going through this book for multiple years and more than likely it's
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the root my “hate” towards Java.
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In retrospective I consider Java very primitive language. You might disagree
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with me on this one, but if you think about it, Java is very simple language in
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the sense of syntax and what it can do[^5]. And yes, there are lots of people
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that consider C# the _Microsoft's Java_[^6], but you cannot hide the fact that
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in the recent releases there are features that are almost 1:1 taken from the C#
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and implemented in the Java. Most of them are _quality of life_ things that make
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the life of the developers less painful. All in all, there are still many things
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that you need to workaround in Java by abusing interfaces and design patterns
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and some of those things can be done in a very simple way in other languages[^7]
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Around the time of attending the high school C appeared in my life… I think I've
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seen C for the first time in the lectures from FIT CTU[^8]
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After C we have a mayhem of anything and everything.
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Looking back I have to admit that I've managed to move from Java towards C# as
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the preferred language, though this has not been reflected in my professional
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experience (both working and teaching) and I haven't even touched the C#
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recently apart from the LeetCode challenges.
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### High school
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Pascal
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Python
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[^1]:
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I'm purposefully leaving out educational “languages” like Scratch,
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[Baltík](https://www.sgpsys.com/infovek/index.htm) or
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[Imagine](https://imagine.input.sk/index.html).
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[^2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_Basic_(.NET)
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[^3]: I don't even remember which one :smile:
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[^4]: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/microsoft-visual-basic/9780735645332/
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[^5]:
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We also need to keep in mind the aphorism: “All that glitters is not gold”
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and the fact that syntax sugar can be abused and get very hard to process
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for people; yes… I'm looking at you Python…
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[^6]: vomits violently because of the Microsoft; C# is nice though
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[^7]: decorators are something for a long-haul discussion by itself…
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[^8]: _TODO_: add lectures
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