[ale] [ALE] Happy Birthday BASIC

[Steve Litt]

Jon "maddog" Hall via Ale said on Mon, 20 May 2024 12:15:45 -0400

>>Just knowledge of variables, loops, if then statements all that from
>>Basic  
>gave me upper hand in this class.
>
>When people ask me for advice on the first computer language they
>should learn, if they are a Unix or Linux person I say:
>
>sh(1)

Ugh, not me. Bash, dash, /bin/sh etc are just too quirky for the
newbie. Today I'd recommend Python as a first language. Or maybe Free
Pascal using the command line option to make it be just the Turbo
Pascal subset of Free Pascal.


>After Python I will recommend assembly language, which may seem
>strange to y'all, but I find it much easier to teach "C" and
>re-entrant, recursive programming after one knows a bit about computer
>architecture and assembly. 

I don't know about Linux, but I made a policy decision not to continue
doing assembler development after the third time I trashed my whole OS
with an assembly language error. Maybe Linux has guards against that
kind of thing.

>After that LISP, 

I'd love to learn LISP. Which LISP implementation do you recommend for
a guy who uses Void Linux?

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt 

Autumn 2023 featured book: Rapid Learning for the 21st Century
http://www.troubleshooters.com/rl21