spikesC:
second part, java and c++ being wrong

dhtml: When i was telling someone just a few days back that they should not be counting qbasic, fortran as programming languages because they are profitless, there was argument.
Even the Nigerian students themselves, most of them dont research and dont know their left from their right.

dhtml: It counts actually, but . . . for a professional profile?

asalimpo:

there's everythg wrong with teachg Basic. EvRY THING WRONG.
the only reason this nonsense can go on in Nigerian Institutions is because Lecturers get away with too much slackness. What does it take a H.O.D to browse d net,see d trends and revise the departments curriculum?

asalimpo:
There is no excuse for this other thn laziness and apathy.
If their counterparts in other countries are writg textbooks in mainstream programming languages alongside keepg their jobs wat does does a nigerian lecturer have to say?
The languages in use are over 40+yrs old. You cant get current textbooks on them. How old must it b in a fast changg field where new languages are created evry year and updated every month (in some case)?
Students shud push against this crap theyre being spoonfed.

Java is almost 20 years old. Scala almost 8, clojure around 6, c++ almost 30,python 24 . How long would it take a lecturer to learn a mainstream langauge enuff to teach it and upgrade a mouldy curriculum?
A year(at most at a very lazy pace).
There's no valid excuse.

losprince: our com 112 lecturer finished dictating the note from his phone... screams "ASSIGNMENT NUMBER 15!" smiling, he dictates the question-"these assignment I'm giving you people will help you know the subject" subject? he is calling the course a subject.. with a mean face he says "make sure you write your text book serial number or else..." walks out of the class...


and that is how we are taught

Javanian:

As explained in my penultimate post, Languages like Qbasic, Pascal and Fortran are used to introduce students to Basic Programming concepts, so except you can prove that those languages cannot achieve the aforementioned, you have no case.

asalimpo:

Comg from a country and continent tht is not leadg d pack ,ur explanation may pass otherwise it doesnt hold.
If d nigerian universities ar starved for ideas, they cud simply copy wat their contemporaries in frst wrlds ar doing.
The title of ths post says frst wrld unis are switchg frst languages. Y dont they buy ur/9ja uni logic and stck with 40/50 yr old obsolete languages?

Languages tht teach deprecated concepts like goto ,

begin/end/endif for block delimiters when universally,
shorter symbols hav come to stay
{}.

Languages, tht ddnt handle recursion!, languages tht used unsightly UPPERCASE words for evry thng and line numbers in increments of 10s. Is this education or mutilation?

Languages students cnt go online and buy books on or download compilers on?

Wat concept is being conveyed in ths deprecated rusty langs tht cudnt b conveyed in a mainstream language ?

Javanian:



They are programming languages used to introduce computer science student to basic programming concepts. I am yet to hear of any school home or abroad that teaches only QBasic and FORTRAN. Universities eventually teach the likes of C, C++, Java and Assembly at a later stage. The Computer science syllabubs is planned to accommodate students who are even yet to learn how to do a Cold Boot on Computer System talk more of writing a single line of code, hence the presence of computer appreciation courses in their first year in school.

Javanian:

I may be wrong and i stand to be corrected but i am yet to hear of any University that teaches students how to use frameworks as part of her Computer science syllabus.

Javanian:

As explained in my penultimate post, Languages like Qbasic, Pascal and Fortran are used to introduce students to Basic Programming concepts, so except you can prove that those languages cannot achieve the aforementioned, you have no case.

asalimpo:

You dont know how to argue neither do you know how to access a critique objectively. I'll answer you points one by one.

what are basic programming concepts? define the vague terms ur using to justify the sustenance of mouldy university curriculums.

looping
threading
assignment
variable declaration
programming blocks
scope
conditionals
modularity (dividing code into blocks )
returning a value
data types
compiling a program


These are concepts better taught or better understood when taught in an older language?
that is the only justification for using these old technologies.

These concepts can't be better taught or better relayed using a more recent language . recent here doesnt mean
in the last 2 years but in the last 20 years.?

A lecturer cant read up on developments in the last 20 years cuz older is better and you're trying to justify this junk.

Every aspect of technology has changed in the last 20 years . what was once an advanced concept is now basic ?

and yet, you justify mouldiness.
grow up.

youngestpr:

Well i think you should take a look at the T24 banking software. You can't be really successful as a consultant if you do not understand BASIC. And you know what it means to be a Banking Software Consultant? Although the world might be rapidly moving away from those languages but those who are making the moves are doing so because they had a knowledge of the former and know what should be adjusted to form a new paradigm or language. I learnt Fortran while I was in school, now I use BASIC and JAVA and moving to GROOVY. I do not think any knowledge of any programming language is useless. The important part i think is that a programmer should be flexible and with an open mind to be able to switch whenever required. *Just my opinion*

type
  a = array[1..10] of integer;
  b = record
        x : integer;
        y : char
      end;
  c = file of a;

  program Mine(output);
 
var i : integer;
 
procedure Print(var j : integer);
begin
...
end;
 
begin
...
Print(i);
end.

 5 LET S = 0 
10 MAT INPUT V 
20 LET N = NUM 
30 IF N = 0 THEN 99 
40 FOR I = 1 TO N 
45 LET S = S + V(I) 
50 NEXT I 
60 PRINT S/N 
70 GO TO 5 
99 END

DECLARE SUB PrintSomeStars (StarCount!)
REM QuickBASIC example
INPUT "What is your name: ", UserName$
PRINT "Hello "; UserName$
DO
   INPUT "How many stars do you want: ", NumStars
   CALL PrintSomeStars(NumStars)
   DO
      INPUT "Do you want more stars? ", Answer$
   LOOP UNTIL Answer$ <> ""
   Answer$ = LEFT$(Answer$, 1)
LOOP WHILE UCASE$(Answer$) = "Y"
PRINT "Goodbye "; UserName$
 
SUB PrintSomeStars (StarCount)
   REM This procedure uses a LOCAL variable called Stars$
   Stars$ = STRING$(StarCount, "*"
   PRINT Stars$
END SUB

 
 

System.out.println("some bla";

PRINT

Javanian:

Yes, QBasic, Fortran and Pascal are okay for introducing students to programming. Whether or not they are old is none of my business. As far as they achieve their aim, they are perfectly viable. They all have looping, assignment, variable declaration, programming blocks, scope, conditionals, modularity (dividing code into blocks ), returning a value and data types.

asalimpo:
IN hundred years time they'll be people making a living maintaing java code's written in our generation.
so, for this reason universities 3 generations from today should spoon feed their students java?
dyu know any startup writing software in BASIC? There consultants making money writing ABAP/SAP software,
consultants making a killing writing COBOL, LISP developers are in demand- so what does that say?
they're museum's preserving fossils. too.
The cost of replacing the banking software is higher , than the cost of hiring a consultant to update them. or maybe
that's what it likely says. its not a statement about the superiority of old tech. But in the long run,this decision is
more expensive - why not write the software in a mainstream language, then higher cheaper labour to maintain it?!

asalimpo: [I harvested this codes from wikipedia].
they look very natural and intuitive for teaching present generations programming.

ladies and gentlemen, introducing PASCAL
hello world
Program HelloWorld;
Begin
WriteLn('Hello world!')
End.

not bad.

to create a type
type
x = integer;
y = x;
...

Here's the java equiv:

class Integer{}

// creating an integer.
Integer i = new Integer

a complex type

type
  a = array[1..10] of integer;
  b = record
        x : integer;
        y : char
      end;
  c = file of a;

format for modularizing programs

  program Mine(output);
 
var i : integer;
 
procedure Print(var j : integer);
begin
...
end;
 
begin
...
Print(i);
end.

pascal has goto


BASIC

this program calculates the average of a group of numbers.

 5 LET S = 0 
10 MAT INPUT V 
20 LET N = NUM 
30 IF N = 0 THEN 99 
40 FOR I = 1 TO N 
45 LET S = S + V(I) 
50 NEXT I 
60 PRINT S/N 
70 GO TO 5 
99 END

point: is y teach useless needless concepts. line numbers that are mandatory but u'll never resort to when u learn
later languages. GOTO that you'll never see in later languages.

anoda code block in basic

DECLARE SUB PrintSomeStars (StarCount!)
REM QuickBASIC example
INPUT "What is your name: ", UserName$
PRINT "Hello "; UserName$
DO
   INPUT "How many stars do you want: ", NumStars
   CALL PrintSomeStars(NumStars)
   DO
      INPUT "Do you want more stars? ", Answer$
   LOOP UNTIL Answer$ <> ""
   Answer$ = LEFT$(Answer$, 1)
LOOP WHILE UCASE$(Answer$) = "Y"
PRINT "Goodbye "; UserName$
 
SUB PrintSomeStars (StarCount)
   REM This procedure uses a LOCAL variable called Stars$
   Stars$ = STRING$(StarCount, "*"
   PRINT Stars$
END SUB

 
 

this is more intuitive that something that ruby,perl,python,scala etc could do.?

END SUB = } (IN C-LIKE LANGUAGES)
outside the course where will the student use this syntax again?
granted PRINT is easier on the eyes than

System.out.println("some bla";

but which one is easier for writing modular code in.
why learn the easier

PRINT

and the useless all caps convention no language supports
only to unlearn it in your next higher level class?
if you learn junk, which you'll never compile and run except on the board, only to unlearn it,
unlearn it cuz its too bad for modern use - who is the fool? the school that upholds this philosophy or
the students that allow this meaningless routine take place on them in the name of learning?
The only reason BASIC and PASCAL seems easier is because they were all procedural then.
you open a file, write you top down program and go.
procedural has been superceded , programs number in the millions,
old world basic and pascal and all the fortrans in this world couldnt l handl large software.
large software then was maybe 3,000 lines of code. huge was maybe 50,000 loc.
modern languages were structured for large software that's y taking off in them isnt easy.
cuz they force you to modularize from the start.
that's y java,c++ starts you off with a class and gets you importing packages and classes
early.
while its hard early on, you'll thank God for it when you code hits 100 000 loc plus.
i dont even want to mention ADA which is paranoid.
to justify this crap, from a computer science student/software engineer is lamentable

using System;
 
namespace goto_statement
{
  class Program
   {
     static void Main(string[] args)
      {
        string name;
 
        label: //creating label with colon(
 
        Console.WriteLine("Enter your name:";
        name = Console.ReadLine();
 
        Console.WriteLine("Welcome {0}", name);
 
        goto label; //jump to label statement           
      }
   }
}

#include <iostream>
using namespace std;
 
int main ()
{
   // Local variable declaration:
   int a = 10;

   // do loop execution
   LOOP:do
   {
       if( a == 15)
       {
          // skip the iteration.
          a = a + 1;
          goto LOOP;
       }
       cout << "value of a: " << a << endl;
       a = a + 1;
   }while( a < 20 );
 
   return 0;
}

<?php 
 goto a;
 echo 'Hello';
 
 a:
 echo 'Goodbye';
 ?>

asalimpo:
basic has dollar signs after variable declaration!, line numbers - mandatory or your program will no run.

since you advocate this. Y dont you advocate the teachers teaching students with the computers that were in voque when
this languages were reigning?! Y not. those computers had keyboards,cpu's,ram,hard disk,monitors, if you tried hard they were even portable? Y not advocate it.? you'd advocate using modern systems right?
logical thinking indeed.

youngestpr:
Do you know that Fortran is now becoming more object oriented? Do you know that virtually all languages had the goto statement although it is now deprecated in most. Who says people still use goto in BASIC? Maybe we are looking at different 'BASIC'

Javanian:

PHP also has dollar sign before the code can run, is it also an obsolete language? Besides basic does not enforce the dollar sign, i implore you to get yourself acquainted with what you are arguing against because you keep on making very absurd claims here. Even ASP.NET uses the dollar sign to indicate how an expression is to follow, when used within the tag of a web page. Doesn't JSP use '<%'? does it make obsolete and ugly?

Later versions of the BASIC programming language don't use line numbers, please it is imperative that you get your facts right before making unsubstantiated claims here.



As far as a computer is capable of satisfying my needs, i would use it, be it 10MB ram or 10GB ram. It is not my business so far as it serves the purpose for which it is intended. Same applies to BASIC, Fortran and Pascal, they are viable options for the purpose they are intended, their age is trivial.

asalimpo:
The BASIC thought in schools isnt modern basic,Vb, but d archaic old wrld kind. Ridden with primitivity.
At source level,GOTO, IS considered bad. But teachg programmg with these archaic languages students will b fed this bad practce.
Fortran has oop version,so does pascal, provg tht this languages had to grow to improve versions to still b relevant. If there were no defects theyd b no need for improvements. So if old school fortran has improved versions wat justification does the highest centers of learng in our country hav for usg the more defectve versions for teachg?

asalimpo:

php,perl,even java (for anonymous classes), ADA have a dollar sign but while these languages hav different philosophies, theyre standardzg on certain conventions.
The dollar sign comes before d identifier.
No mainstream programmg language of d past 20yrs uses uppercase. It's considered unsightly, neither do they place dollar signs AFTER identifiers.
Blocks are delimited with fewer characters (space,(,),{,} etc) and so on. This is d evolution of programming languages and its considered better than its ancestors.

Java has GOTO but in all languages its deprecated (considered bad practce). How many programmers and open source project dyu actvely know usg deprecations like GOTO?

Javanian:
As far as a computer is capable of satisfying my needs, i would use it, be it 10MB ram or 10GB ram.

spikesC: Chai, na so this thread don reach

pls lets close this matter. Javanian, i get your point quite well. Those languages are very good to be used as introductory languages, but if used and thought with best practices.

You do not really know the extent of archaic teaching been perpetuated in the Nigerian universities. If you do you wouldnt have been arguing with asalimpo

Most lecturers do not know "hello world", not to talk of OOP
They just reiterate what they see in an ebook they copied 50yrs ago. This is not an exageration. I have seen this first hand. It is not a hearsay.

I have a close friend who is gonna be graduating this year in computer Engineering. After 5 years, the guy do not know what a variable is.

It is not just him, it is all of them. The few who accepted their demise had to engage in outside training. Others, ignorantly, do not know what they've been missing.

What most of them do, just to get into the 21st century IT is blogging
But then, they do not know how to setup blogs from scratch. Na blogger be the saviour

We need a total overhaul of our educational sector
We are concurrently churning out thousands of certified ignorant illiterates every year. Ignorant in the sense that they do not even know that they know nothing

Djtm:
Did you just say 10mb? There's no way a 10mb ram will satisfy your need so stop lying. Lol.