Path: csiph.com!v102.xanadu-bbs.net!xanadu-bbs.net!news.glorb.com!border3.nntp.dca.giganews.com!Xl.tags.giganews.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!local2.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.earthlink.com!news.earthlink.com.POSTED!not-for-mail NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2012 14:57:58 -0500 Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2012 12:58:02 -0700 From: Patricia Shanahan User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:11.0) Gecko/20120327 Thunderbird/11.0.1 MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.java.programmer Subject: Re: Teaching kids to program (in Java) References: <4f87624e$0$287$14726298@news.sunsite.dk> <71igo75jrn2rodtmtv8qnc9q6hrl0n6lkt@4ax.com> <4f88c92a$0$293$14726298@news.sunsite.dk> <4f8e22d5$0$293$14726298@news.sunsite.dk> <4f8f4c40$0$291$14726298@news.sunsite.dk> <20638428.276.1334951022461.JavaMail.geo-discussion-forums@pbcsx5> In-Reply-To: <20638428.276.1334951022461.JavaMail.geo-discussion-forums@pbcsx5> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: Lines: 34 X-Usenet-Provider: http://www.giganews.com NNTP-Posting-Host: 70.230.201.141 X-Trace: sv3-xd92vDzeDIHqq8JTM0mbzpWo5eARAeNWj7vjbwoAyaTrCAlKrSKUfXjmf6og+vITEelsvWk1leywoxQ!n9BdwRwIwAFHJTf9JgtxMwpQB0b4yQiY/I9seOlYgslm6phwyGcYk5jVfIU7XJLcsYfQnWWIrpdJ!rWB/Z6kZDRzPP3MccU1h4atn8IHS55XNRylMt4lfm9ROsdk= X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly X-Postfilter: 1.3.40 X-Original-Bytes: 3124 Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.java.programmer:13710 On 4/20/2012 12:43 PM, Lew wrote: > Gene Wirchenko wrote: >> Arved Sandstrom wrote: >> >> [snip] >> >>> I'm with Arne on this one. I expect programmers using a language >>> to at least thoroughly understand the datatypes for a language. >>> Granted, leading zeros are a pretty crappy prefix choice, which >>> is why a lot of languages use something else, but a diligent >>> _learning_programmer should have discovered this crappy choice >>> when reading about literals. >> >> Odd. You are agreeing with ME. > > Then you and Arne are in agreement. > > Leading zeroes to represent octal values weren't added to the C > language family "without notice" at all, but with abundant notice. > Arne is simply saying that one must learn the programming language if > one wishes to use it. This includes reading the documentation, > wherein such notice is offered. > > Computer programming uses all sorts of terms and notations in ways > different from ordinary usage ("method", "call", "object", "integer", > "%", "@"). It is incumbent upon one learning a programming language > to learn the specific semantics and syntax, and complaints that it is > unlike other languages (programming or otherwise) are feckless. > Remember this thread is about teaching kids to program. Shouldn't a certain amount of fecklessness be expected and planned for? Patricia