Re: Why prefer V over so called visual languages?
Hilton Fernandes wrote:
> The students for these courses will be my current basic C++ students,
> and i'm talking to them in order to design a course thats' able to
> motivate them.
Give it a loud name, like `Introduction to OO Design and
Construction'. Promise some interesting projects (games
and simulations ususally attract beginners).
> When talking to some more advanced students they asked me: hey, why
> don't we just use a visual language? Like Delphi or VB?
Because the goal of the class is to teach OO, as opposed
to teaching how to make rapid prorotypes with graphical
builders.
> Some of my answers to these objections are: the app frameworks don't
> create good OO designs;
Very arguable. Beginners won't create better designs than,
say, Java AWT (for which there exist graphical builders).
> you should understand what's under the hood
V hides what's under the hood just as well as `visual'
languages.
> and V is multiplatform.
So are Tcl/Tk and Java.
However, one can learn V over an evening coffee, which is
not true of pretty much anything else. V is simple, so it
does not distract one from the goal--understanding OO. One
can concentrate on the design, as opposed to figuring out
how toolkit Z works.
I had a similar class awhile ago. We used wxWindows. The
professor had to spent at least a week explaining wxWindows,
which is simply wasteful. Then, I spent a few days porting
that thing to FreeBSD--not as easy as it might seem, and not
at all educational.
Java took me a couple of weeks to get hold of. I cannot
comment on Delphi because I was never pressured to learn
it, so I did that over a long period of time. I don't
know VB.
V took me two hours to port and to learn. This beats
everything else hands down.
--
Drive^H^Hnk safely!
Alex Verstak averstak@vt.edu
1078 Ambler Johnston East Virginia Tech
Blacksburg, VA 24060-0022 Tel. (540) 232-1389
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