Re: Good introductory texts ? (was Re: Suitability of Lua as a First Programming Language?)

[steve donovan <steve.j.donovan@...>]

On Wed, Sep 23, 2009 at 2:13 PM, Ralph Hempel
<rhempel@hempeldesigngroup.com> wrote:
> They ask about the IDE, and where is the compiler. The fact that
> my typical development environment is an editor and a terminal
> emulator is baffling to them.

The 'conversational' style is foreign to the IDE generation, which is
a pity. Issuing commands and getting gratifying responses is the
essence of the imperative style.

> The problem is the incredible inertia involved in getting it into
> a high school or university curriculum. I've got a lot of interest
> in pbLua from engineering schools that use the LEGO MINDSTORMS
> in first year classes, but they almost all use Robot-C because
> the course description says it's an introductory programming
> course that uses C with robotics....

Yes, they would have to sneak it in, maybe as an API training wheel.
People are too quick to tick off the buzzwords.

Of course, you could always try interactive C/C++ ;)   I tried that,
wrote a book about it, and realized that most people did not see the
point.

steve d.