kung-fu-master
Joined 16 years ago
Joined 16 years ago
JS was built for small scripts on web pages.
I think Python is a worse choice because it's also more complicated and less elegant than JavaScript (and it has its own share of pitfalls), but that seems to be a minority opinion around here.
You wrong, Python is much elegant than JS. Starting from syntax which was derived from C/C++ like languages. With a lot of bugs and confusing behaviors (some of was mentioned by Resig itself).
Code in Python is very clear and looks like pseudo-code. It's very easy to read and very easy to start writing in it.
JS - specialized language for Web. Python - general purpose language.
Prototypal inheritance is much simpler than classical inheritance--you don't even have to introduce the idea of a class. I think it would be easier to teach prototypal inheritance rather than classical inheritance to people with no programming experience.
There should be no inheritance for beginners. It's not even core CS concept. No classes, no OOP in any kind of it (prototypal, classical).
I think with this approach we will get not CS professionals. We will get JS script kiddies.
What is their goal. It seems that John Resig only wants to teach his favorite language/tool JS.
Main goal must be to teach fundamental CS concepts, programming basics, algorithms and data structures. Language choice is must to be appropriate to that goals.
He talks about teaching prototypal inheritance, is he serious? For those how have not any prior programming experience.
It seems, that he has no any prior pedagogical experience. Why that guy make such decisions and why Khan academy can't hire more experienced CS teacher.
Yes, I know, he is great guy who wrotes jQuery, but pedagogy and JS programming is two very different areas.
Also Darcs was written in Haskell and Bazaar with Python.
I hate C++ too (over 10 years of experience). But Linus is full of BS too.
Yes, choice of C language in Git is right choice. But source code of Git is horrible and unmaintainable mess.
About 10-20 years ago it was very simple task. Computers and programming were very exciting.
What has changed? Nowadays there are a lot of interesting and distracting factors like computer games, TV, Internet etc.
I think our primary goal is to make learning computer science more interesting and fun. It must be more interesting than computer games and TV. It is really interesting than computer games! We just need to show that for our students.
How can we do that? For example, at our school I have made 3D robots simulator which has own simple programming language. Students are programming virtual robot to reach some goals. It's like game. Also I have made "real" robot based on Arduino with IR sensors.
As a result I can see increased interest and motivation of my students.
Compare to: Ruby - 141811 repos. Python - 67482 repos.
It seems that writing on Ruby is more fun than writing in Lisp.