Thread: is C appropriate for intro to computers?

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Originally Posted by lugnut

It just seems there ought to be a simpler way to do pointer arithmetic. Most of this is just trying to beat the compiler.

That's so true. I was thinking about posting a little rant in this General section about what I think of the current computer courses, based on the questions and issues people appear to have...

The sentiment above by a student illustrates this completely. Are students to learn idiosyncrasies of C and get bogged down in it, apparently, or would they be better served to learn algorithms, meticulousness and attention to detail, logic, deductive logic, systematic approaches, and a more generic approach to solving problems using computers? Perhaps C isn't the best tool for introducing programming.

I'm an oldgeezer/oldtimer.... I was taught programming using BASIC (which was designed to be a teaching tool, coincidentally). In high school we learned how to iterate Pi using series, solve area and volume problems (early methods equivalent to integrals). For example: what's the most efficient ratio of a cylinder to minimize surface area for a given volume - i.e. how would you design a pop can if material costs were all the same for sides or top.

Language idiosyncrasies were few. If any. Simple IF, PRINT, FOR/NEXT. I don't recall anyone needing remedial help with syntax issues. More likely they were asking about why the results were off... or why one had to convert from degrees to radians.

C doesn't seem appropriate because too many "pointer" issues, memory allocation, integer vs.. float, plus bracket and indenting distractions miss the point of making computer literate people entirely.

Maybe it's because we used to call it "computer science" in the mid 70s. Where's the science nowadays in tracking down some segmentation fault or core dump?

That's my opinion.

I would agree that pointer issues and memory allocation don't belong in a first programming class. I would also doubt that there are many first programming classes out there that get into pointers and memory allocation (except for perhaps learning scanf, but that's not pointers so much as operator&). The students we've seen here (and that we've all seen in real life too, I would guess) who can't process order-of-operations for a formula are going to be equally sunk in BASIC as anything else. (Or those who can't find the big box of source code in their textbook. Or those who can't grasp the flow of a program from top to bottom. Or ... you get the idea.) Would VB be a better learning language than C? I don't know -- I don't really know VB.

Integer vs. floating-point seems like a pretty important distinction to make, if they're going to use a typed programming language. It helps to get used to limited-precision in floating-point too (I know some CIS faculty here who get really upset at Excel when they type in 0.93 and it ends up being 0.9299999999999999999997).

(And to be honest, I don't know that that was a student posting -- dealing with data headers and going back and forth with EBCDIC doesn't sound like a typical academic project.)

We started with several weeks of just learning what base-2 system is all about. Logic - tables, simple boolean, some rules... then gates (AND, OR), designing adders, comparators, shift registers, counters... all on paper. Then we migrated to the school's computer using BASIC. I think those fundamentals may not be taught today. Else we wouldn't be seeing all those questions about what's binary, and how's all that hex stuff anyways.

Then later on, post secondary, there were classes in a variety of computer languages for that time...

Write an equation parser, factoring & simplifying algebraically, and finally write a program to do derivatives algebraically, in SNOBOL.

Write a simplified airline reservation system in COBOL.

Write a bucket sort algorithm in LISP.

Write some sort of simple game such as Xs and Os in PL1.

Those all seem to me to be pretty sophisticated compared to the "read a movie title and then print it out" stuff I see on the question boards.

In many ways, computer science was more a field of general excitement and exploration a few decades ago. Now we're stuck with a handful of popularized languages, dictated to us because of market momentum and your company's lock-step lemming mentality.

Maybe programming is 99% frustration nowadays. But it didn't used to be. I wouldn't have lasted 30 years in this biz if it had.

I think the focus was more towards an enthusiastic student who says "I wanna get into computers"... so a wide variety of approaches, depth of knowledge (from physical layout of gates to abstract advanced data structures), and several very different languages were thrown at the student.

With those basics he is well equipped to learn any specialized language for whatever tasks. From interfacing hardware and writing low-level machine language drivers to fixing billing systems and diagnosing graphics library bugs.

Today the focus is on teaching a very specific language only. And somehow the student is supposed to glean a "general" computer literacy from that. Is that a bad thing? Maybe not if a future job's requirement fits that knowledge perfectly.

Originally Posted by Elysia

Add it to the list of complaints towards today's programming courses.

Well, not in Greece. Here the logic is to learn the way of programming than a specific language. That is good, but it requires you to learn by yourself the details of the language.

If you want to program with OOP then Java and C# are better than C/C++. If you want something without OOP then C is the best. Now, C++ for me has all the features of C and most of the features of Java. In a way if you know C then you could learn C++ for the OOP features and have one language for basic and advance things. From C++ it is really easy to learn Java. The other way around though isn't that simple.
So in a way, if you want to learn EVERYTHING starting from C and moving on is good. If you don't need the features of C then why bother with C/C++?
If you want to understand how the computer works and what is the connection with the programming language then C/C++ are essential.

Every now and again we rehash this subject with a few banalities about how impossible it is to teach CS students, software engineers, what have you. I hope everyone finds out what makes their mornings bright and sunshinie again, because I think we're placing an disproportionate amount of responsibility on ourselves, and language X.
https://cboard.cprogramming.com/showthread.php?t=105405
https://cboard.cprogramming.com/showthread.php?t=103387

Not everyone that visits here have the same goal of styling themselves as "programmer": I'm fairly certain that there is some programming involved in engineering degrees, and few engineers write software. I've long supported focusing on your skills in education because that is what will get you hired. I'm not going to shed any tears because I have to help someone with C on my own time.

Is C a good language to start learning to program with? Probably not, but at one point we did because the other ones didn't exist, and there is no perfect language to teach to. But, and this might be the only relative thing in this post, I don't think we make enough use of other choices, like pascal. And likewise, I really don't think schools are teaching C first to CS students, but who knows about other disciplines?

And do you have any thoughts to add to that? Do you agree with the author?