Re: Language suggestions for beginners

"John Coleman" <jcoleman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

Does anybody have a recommendation of a language that is open source
and as easy as VBA to pick up?

I don't think, that VBA is really simple. I have some experience in
teaching programming (to absolute beginners) and I already tested some
languages. The best results 'till now I got with Python and Scheme. I
like Scheme very much because of DrScheme (-> PLT Scheme), it's really
very nice. OTOH Python is a bit more popular and maybe easier for
people which know other languages.

With GA I have not much experience, so I don't know, if Python may be
fast enough (Python has some performance issues), so I would make the
first try with Scheme.

Both Scheme and Python are very good languages for beginners, because
of their simplicity and there are some of the best books on
(introductory) programming based on Scheme (like HtDP or SICP).

I think that with those languages the course and the textbook would
either bloat to more than can be covered in one semester

I don't think so. If you use a language, you have to teach the basics
and from my experience, the family of BASIC languages are not really
easier to teach/learn. DrScheme has also the benefit of the
possibility to choose a language level, so you can just prohibit the
more advanced languages constructs/features (you can do this with most
languages, but with DrScheme you can enforce this with the IDE).

Maybe VBA might be the best solution after all.

For me, it would be a problem -- I don't own Excel and I would not buy
it (only) for a course.

--
Stefan.
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Extol virtues of Lisp, but then use Python?
    ... that prevents you or anyone else to build libraries of useful stuff. ... code (and not just yet another implementation of Scheme). ... COBOL, Fortran, Algol & Assembly languages. ... Python, C, Pascal etc. either. ...
    (comp.lang.scheme)
  • Re: Language suggestions for beginners
    ... that VBA is really simple. ... The best results 'till now I got with Python and Scheme. ... people which know other languages. ...
    (comp.ai.genetic)
  • Python rocks
    ... I've been enchanted by the siren calls of Scheme, Lisp and Forth, but in the end, I find Python much easier. ... and even the web download and regex stuff worked fairly painlessly. ... Other languages seem to have neat ideas; like closures or macros in Scheme, ...
    (comp.lang.python)
  • Re: Where do they tech Python officialy ?
    ... MIT's freshman survey, EECS 1 is taught in Python and Scheme, soon to be just Python. ... I learned programming with Hypertalk (MacIntosh's Hypercard scripting ... I had heard of these languages, but learning them is a bit discouraging ...
    (comp.lang.python)
  • Re: The crux of peoples issues with PLT Scheme?
    ... has bindings to other languages) answers in 65ms or 300ms to a button ... I am also a Python user and in fact I know Python much better than ... Scheme and use it for quite some years. ... so Scheme implementations could ...
    (comp.lang.scheme)