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From: glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.java.programmer
Subject: Re: Teaching kids to program (in Java)
Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2012 10:14:32 +0000 (UTC)
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Leif Roar Moldskred <leifm@dimnakorr.com> wrote:

(snip)
> In my not particularly humble opinion, Java is too crufty to make for
> a good _introductory_ language. There are too many old sins and too
> many idiosyncrasies in the language that are likely to confuse or
> stump someone who doesn't already know how to program. 

Compared to what? How about Fortran or C?

> (Why isn't the first element of an array at position 1? What's the
> difference between int and Integer? Why doesn't System.out.println(
> "Value: " + 01234 ) work? Why do I get a NullPointerException on the
> line "System.out.println( factorial( inputValue ) );"? What _is_ a
> Null Pointer, anyway?)

Many languages have parts that make them hard to use, and hard
to learn, but we do it anyway.

-- glen