What Programming Language Would You Introduce To...

[Lotuspetal_uk]

...a 16 year old computing student?

Hi everyone

I'm revisiting my old teaching resources and realise that I last used VB 6 as a programming language to teach this age group.

I need to brush up my own personal knowledge base and noticed a lot of schools hovering around either PHP, Java or Python.

Given that most of you here actually work in the industry, which language would be the best one for a young person to learn the basics from, such that they would be comfortable with it should they pursue computing at university or the workplace?

I'm leaning towards Java due to the App industry but heard this is too hard for kids to learn.

Alas no school in the UK near me will touch VB so I'll basically have to be teaching myself before re-doing my resources.

Thanks for any suggestions and I'll go with what the majority of you suggest.

 

[EphesiaNZ]

I would go for PHP if you want to teach the web side of programming and Python for general programming. I personally hate Java but Java's root are in C++ which came from C so, either of those two languages could be useful too.

VB alas is all but dead as you mentioned.

 

[dysert]

...a 16 year old computing student?

Hi everyone

I'm revisiting my old teaching resources and realise that I last used VB 6 as a programming language to teach this age group.

I need to brush up my own personal knowledge base and noticed a lot of schools hovering around either PHP, Java or Python.

Given that most of you here actually work in the industry, which language would be the best one for a young person to learn the basics from, such that they would be comfortable with it should they pursue computing at university or the workplace?

I'm leaning towards Java due to the App industry but heard this is too hard for kids to learn.

Alas no school in the UK near me will touch VB so I'll basically have to be teaching myself before re-doing my resources.

Thanks for any suggestions and I'll go with what the majority of you suggest.

You pose a difficult dilemma. Do you want a language that "a young person to learn the basics from" or one that "they would be comfortable with it should they pursue computing at university or the workplace"? I don't think they're the same thing.

To learn the basics, i.e., statement flow, loops, conditionals, data types, syntax, etc., then Fortran is great for that (and you can get it for free off the Web). However, since no one uses Fortran any more, the student would have to learn the syntax of a more modern language should they decide to continue.

If you only want one language to deal with, then I'd reluctantly suggest 'C'. It's strongly typed and of course has constructs similar to Fortran. The syntax can be a little off-putting (what with the semicolons and braces -- not to mention that it's case sensitive), but it's not as far gone as Fortran is, and is similar enough to modern languages (C#, Java), that it wouldn't be a stretch to continue with them.

Of course, you could just go straight to C# (which you can also get for free) and only focus on the basics, deferring things like classes, polymorphism, overloading, "using" blocks, etc., until later on.

 

[Lotuspetal_uk]

I would go for PHP if you want to teach the web side of programming and Python for general programming. I personally hate Java but Java's root are in C++ which came from C so, either of those two languages could be useful too.

VB alas is all but dead as you mentioned.

Cheers for this. I'm tossing up between PHP and Python but I too am not keen on Java. One of my friends went down the PHP route.

 

[Lotuspetal_uk]

You pose a difficult dilemma. Do you want a language that "a young person to learn the basics from" or one that "they would be comfortable with it should they pursue computing at university or the workplace"? I don't think they're the same thing.

To learn the basics, i.e., statement flow, loops, conditionals, data types, syntax, etc., then Fortran is great for that (and you can get it for free off the Web). However, since no one uses Fortran any more, the student would have to learn the syntax of a more modern language should they decide to continue.

If you only want one language to deal with, then I'd reluctantly suggest 'C'. It's strongly typed and of course has constructs similar to Fortran. The syntax can be a little off-putting (what with the semicolons and braces -- not to mention that it's case sensitive), but it's not as far gone as Fortran is, and is similar enough to modern languages (C#, Java), that it wouldn't be a stretch to continue with them.

Of course, you could just go straight to C# (which you can also get for free) and only focus on the basics, deferring things like classes, polymorphism, overloading, "using" blocks, etc., until later on.

Cheers, Dysert. This is the thing - I'm looking to deliver the basics as you've just mentioned. I've just googled to see what first year students at a typical UK university will cover and it seems they go into C#. So maybe C could also be an option.

I'm annoyed with my politicians at the moment. I qualified 13 yrs ago with a heavily programming focused teaching degree where we introduce something like 'Scratch' to the 12-14 age group and move onto system building 14-16 with programming 16+. The bulk of my teaching experience meant that the powers that be felt that IT/Computing wasn't important enough to incorporate programming and that kids should know how to type up business documents. Now they are going back to what I was qualified in but all my software at home is now out of date.

I now have to dig the old programming concepts out of my 'grey matter' so that I can be up to date for when I return into the workplace.

Oh boy!

 

[C-Man]

Can't go wrong with Python.
Here's a really good free series of videos:
List of Videos for Python

 

[Lotuspetal_uk]

Can't go wrong with Python.
Here's a really good free series of videos:
List of Videos for Python

Thanks for this C-Man. I've bookmarked this since I know of some schools who are using Python.

What do you guys think of this site?

I was watching the videos yesterday and got up to unit 4. I liked that he introduced the very basics such as hexadecimals, understanding binary etc. I haven't gotten up to the actual programming part yet. Looks like he's using 'C'

Definitely food for thought.

 

[pgp_protector]

C#.net or PHP

 

[EphesiaNZ]

What do you guys think of this site?

...I haven't gotten up to the actual programming part yet. Looks like he's using 'C'

Not too bad for a beginner but I found it a bit slow. Yes he is using C.

You could look at these programming courses at Wikiversity. No video but they get stuck straight in which is my preferred way.

This is another good C++ tutorial site.

You will find (like you have already found) tons of resources via Google for Python, PHP etc. I guess most 16 year olds will want to dive straight in so I guess you would want to keep it simple but to the point and make it fun too - a Raspberry Pi would be a great fun tool for programming and hardware interfacing.

 

[Lotuspetal_uk]

Not too bad for a beginner but I found it a bit slow. Yes he is using C.

You could look at these programming courses at Wikiversity. No video but they get stuck straight in which is my preferred way.

This is another good C++ tutorial site.

You will find (like you have already found) tons of resources via Google for Python, PHP etc. I guess most 16 year olds will want to dive straight in so I guess you would want to keep it simple but to the point and make it fun too - a Raspberry Pi would be a great fun tool for programming and hardware interfacing.

This is brilliant Ephesians, thank you!

What you've given me here should help me to differentiate between the different abilities of students taking computing at this age. Like you I felt that the one I linked to would be good to reassure students with no experience at all in programming but the higher ability students would need something meatier.

It looks as though PHP will eventually take the runnings though

 

[Jonathan Jarvis]

I've Found some freeby Python Courses on Alison

Introduction to Programming with Python

 

[wn123455]

Depends are you going to teach GUI programming or command line programming?
I would say C#(Visual Studio C#) for GUI because of Windows Forms and it's much easier than C++(and in my case VB). I do not code much command line stuff but I would recommend something with auto complete features like Intellisense like Visual Studio(C#, C++, VB) or Eclipse(Java).

 

[Lotuspetal_uk]

I've Found some freeby Python Courses on Alison

Introduction to Programming with Python

Thanks Jonathan!

 

[Lotuspetal_uk]

Depends are you going to teach GUI programming or command line programming?
I would say C#(Visual Studio C#) for GUI because of Windows Forms and it's much easier than C++(and in my case VB). I do not code much command line stuff but I would recommend something with auto complete features like Intellisense like Visual Studio(C#, C++, VB) or Eclipse(Java).

Cheers for this too.

 

[CodeforChrist]

glad to see other programmers here!

 

[aWalkbyFaith]

I started on Python. And at first I kinda regretted it. But once I got into C++ I realized why Python was good to start on. Since then I've come to appreciate Python a lot more.

I don't think the language matters as much as the learning the concepts of programming. It's pretty easy to move from one to another. Nice thing about Python is that it's not hard to see some results. And as a new programmer that's pretty encouraging.

 

[Teesang]

I started out with Java because I wanted to developer android apps. I made an app called Daily Bible Quotes. You guys should check it out!

 

[Lotuspetal_uk]

glad to see other programmers here!

Amen!

 

[Lotuspetal_uk]

I started on Python. And at first I kinda regretted it. But once I got into C++ I realized why Python was good to start on. Since then I've come to appreciate Python a lot more.

I don't think the language matters as much as the learning the concepts of programming. It's pretty easy to move from one to another. Nice thing about Python is that it's not hard to see some results. And as a new programmer that's pretty encouraging.

That's brill AWBF, thanks for this.

 

[Lotuspetal_uk]

I started out with Java because I wanted to developer android apps. I made an app called Daily Bible Quotes. You guys should check it out!

Will do Teesang.