New Programming Class at My High School: What .NET Language Should Be Taught?

[eyeRmonkey]

My high school is dropping its electronics program and picking up programming instead. The class starts in a couple weeks and is one trimester long. The teacher has Visual Studio .NET and doesn’t know which language to teach. I keep telling him he should teach Visual Basic because it is the easiest to learn (for new programmers). The only reason he is considering other languages in Visual Studio is because the only language he knows is C and he hasn’t even done that for a long time.

I was hoping to get some feedback as to what language you think my school should teach. I will relay this all to the teacher.

[crptcblade]

C# all the way. Or COBOL.NET.

[eyeRmonkey]

The reason I think he should teach VB .NET is because it is closer to english. C# is only one step away from VB, but I think the using Then ... End If is easier to remember/read/understand than { ... }. For people who have never programmed anyway.

Thanks for the input though. I'll probably just link him to this thread.

[|2eM!x]

I wish I decided to learn c# instead....I like c syntax alot better than vb syntax in alot of areas..

[eyeRmonkey]

But you knew VB6 first Remix. You are coming from a programming background. Think of someone who has never attempted any programming before. Lots of symbols might be harder to remember. I know I had trouble learning ANY program language (C, Java, C++) until I finally found Visual Basic. But I think that might also be because Visual Basic was the first language I had tried that allowed you to design the form instead of programming the form.

[gigemboy]

If its for beginners and high school, then definitely go with VB.NET.... thats my 2 cents... ya might want a refund...

[deranged]

I vote C#. I've been giving help to an 8th grade student via AIM. He's really got the hang of the braces syntax. Not to mention, only BASIC based languages use that if/then/end if syntax. PHP, Java, C, C++, J#, and many other languages use the braces syntax. I know that all colleges around here require that you learn Java as your first programming language. There's really no reason to have to learn VB.NET, and potentially never use it again if you decide to go on to learning C++ or code in Java for linux or something.

However, I'm not dissing VB.NET. I've heard only good things about it, however, I have no intentions of learning it since I know C#.

[eyeRmonkey]

I suppose C# is a good for long term programming. But once you learn one programming language, learning another one is usually a snap.

Deranged, you mentioned that there is no point to learn VB .NET because you will probably never use it agian. My only argument to that (not that I am trying to argue) is that most of the kids who take a high school programming course won't use any programming ever again.

I still say VB is the easiest to learn as your first language and if anyone who takes the class goes onto do programming in college then they will have to learn a new language one way or another because neither VB nor C# are the common languages they want you to learn in college.


Sorry for seeming argumentitive, I am just trying to present my point and get feedback as to why I might be wrong.

[mpdeglau]

I would say start with a tuff language. Learn C++. Then all the other languages and concepts will be a breeze.

[deranged]

I suppose C# is a good for long term programming. But once you learn one programming language, learning another one is usually a snap.

Deranged, you mentioned that there is no point to learn VB .NET because you will probably never use it agian. My only argument to that (not that I am trying to argue) is that most of the kids who take a high school programming course won't use any programming ever again.

I still say VB is the easiest to learn as your first language and if anyone who takes the class goes onto do programming in college then they will have to learn a new language one way or another because neither VB nor C# are the common languages they want you to learn in college.


Sorry for seeming argumentitive, I am just trying to present my point and get feedback as to why I might be wrong.

I do see your points and they are all valid ones. I guess it's just a personal preference to use the curly braces rather than the vb syntax. Other than that, I think VB.NET is about the same as C#.

I'm glad it's at least going to be a .NET language being taught. They are (in my opinion) the best languages because of the versatility (websites, windows programs, smartphone, some PDAs, and the new 'UltraMobile PCs')

[Filik]

I vote drop the NET routine and learn PHP or Delphi
If not then i vote VB

[visualAd]

At the school I work in, the closest they get to programming is queries in MS access.

[eyeRmonkey]

We are doing .NET because teachers can get Visual Studio 2005 for free. It isn't even the express version (or so I am told).

C# wouldn't be that bad. It is the MS suggested language (not that that matters much in this case) and curly braces are the only main difference. Plus you don't have all the pitfalls of the old VB 6 stuff being available to you. Not that that is really a pitfall, but I (personally) would rather be forced to learn the new way of doing things and not have VB 6 function available to me.

[mendhak]

Your teacher is closer to C# than he is to VB.NET. For him to teach VB.NET would be a big learning curve for him, and that means that he's going to give you all the wrong concepts as he goes along.

It's best you learn C# in class, and learn VB.NET on your own time, since it's so easy to pick up.

[Filik]

Your teacher is closer to C# than he is to VB.NET. For him to teach VB.NET would be a big learning curve for him, and that means that he's going to give you all the wrong concepts as he goes along.

It's best you learn C# in class, and learn VB.NET on your own time, since it's so easy to pick up.

Learning C# and VB at the same time is a waste of time.
Once you learn one language, you already know half of the other, so there's no need to learn both of them at once

[penagate]

I think that was his point.

[tr333]

i would recommend haskell for anyone new to programming (and also anyone not new). you don't need to worry about things like variables, and you have infinite integers/lists (not possible without lazy evaluation, which afaik doesnt exist in procedural or OO languages). and there is plenty of recursion (and more recursion).

A string in haskell is just a list of chars, so you can have strings of infinite length (not possible in procedural/OO languages).

example: creating an infinite list of the fibonacci numbers

fibonacci :: Int
fibonacci = 0 : 1 : zipWith (+) fibonacci (tail fibonacci)

quicksort:

 quicksort :: Ord a => [a] -> [a]  --notice the algebraic data types
 
 quicksort []           = []
 quicksort (pivot:tail) = quicksort [y | y <- tail, y < pivot]
                          ++ [pivot]
                          ++ quicksort [y | y <- tail, y >= pivot]

haskell is also quite useful for learning CGI.

[penagate]

And students are supposed to understand that gibberish how.... ?

[tr333]

And students are supposed to understand that gibberish how.... ?

practise and learning. I learnt it in my 1st year compsci course at uni (designed to accomodate people who have never programmed before).

i find it much easier to implement a complex algorithm in haskell than a procedural language.

Anyone can see that functional programming requires a different way of thinking to procedural/oo programming (no variables/loops/etc, only recursion).

[Shaggy Hiker]

Well URMonkey, you can hardly call this an unbiased poll.

I agree that VB would be the best language for people just getting into programming. It is closer to english, so it would be easier to read, and has far fewer semicolons.

However, there's another reason you might put forward: All of Office is currently still using VBA for macro languages. While VB.NET is certainly not the same as VBA, the syntax and keywords are essentially the same. If a person was to dabble in VB.NET, they would be able to marginally comprehend macros written in VBA, as well. A person who continues on with programming can move to C/C++/C#/PHP/PCP/JAVA/LSD, or whatever. However a person who doesn't continue with programming will almost certainly continue with Office. Being familiar with the VB syntax, structure, and keywords will give them a slight advantage with Office macros....at least for a few more years.

[eyeRmonkey]

i find it much easier to implement a complex algorithm in haskell than a procedural language.

I don't think high school students are going to be doing complex algorithms.

Like I said, we have to pick a .NET language because that is the what is available to us. That brings the choices down to C# or VB .NET.

We are definitely sticking to OOP for the simple reason that we live in an object oriented world. Not an algorithmic world. It is easy to understand that the Breath() is a method of the Body class and that Pulse is a property of it. Whereas algorithms are more abstract and math based.

Well URMonkey, you can hardly call this an unbiased poll.

I agree that VB would be the best language for people just getting into programming. It is closer to english, so it would be easier to read, and has far fewer semicolons.

However, there's another reason you might put forward: All of Office is currently still using VBA for macro languages. While VB.NET is certainly not the same as VBA, the syntax and keywords are essentially the same. If a person was to dabble in VB.NET, they would be able to marginally comprehend macros written in VBA, as well. A person who continues on with programming can move to C/C++/C#/PHP/PCP/JAVA/LSD, or whatever. However a person who doesn't continue with programming will almost certainly continue with Office. Being familiar with the VB syntax, structure, and keywords will give them a slight advantage with Office macros....at least for a few more years.

You're quite right, it is far from unbiased. Thats the way I like it.

You have a VERY good point about VBA. And who knows, maybe the next version of office will implement VBA .NET.

Going from VB .NET onto any other programming language isn't hard at all (especially if it is a .NET language). Going from C# to VBA would be a little bit of a challenge. But in reality I doubt that many people would even use VBA after they were out of high school.

I also agree that C# would be easier for the teacher to learn and therefore easier for him to teach.

I think I am starting to learn towards C# now. Then again, less semi-colons and more english really would help a lot of people I think. But maybe that is just a false preception we all have?

I think the real reason it was easier for me (personally) to learn VB than C/C++ was because VB was the first visual language I tried to learn. Since all C# and VB.NET are both that way, I suppose they both might be easy to learn.

[mendhak]

There will not be a VBA.NET/VBScript.NET, so I have been told by the powers that be.

[tr333]

Like I said, we have to pick a .NET language because that is the what is available to us. That brings the choices down to C# or VB .NET.

i would go with C#, simply because the code is easier to read (i find it harder to read code that doesnt have the ';' at the end of the line). Also, the syntax for conditional/loop statements is much nicer than VB.

[KGComputers]

If your teacher is an expert in C++, then C# or C++ would be better for the program...Otherwise, use VB...I myself programmed C in Highschool using the borland c++...Now, learning other basic concepts like java, VB6, c++ is pretty cool...
One thing for sure is that let the teacher grasp some concepts in .NET before the classes start..Then he can decide on what's good for the program...C# or VB.net can be learned in one trimester, it also depends on the course topic to be presented and the duration(timeframe)..
Even if he has not done programming in C for a span of time, he has stock knowledge on the concepts...Im pretty sure, he can associate the cout<</printf thing with the C# or VB.NET display...

[wossname]

People should be taught VB.net in pre-school. I believe advanced VB.net is a part of the curriculum for the under 5's now.

*derisory, elitist laughter*

[Wally Pipp]

They should teach prolog.net

[wossname]

All languages should be abolished and people should be made to scratch holes into cardboard squares (using their fingernails) and use those to program pedal-powered analogue machines (much like apple macs today).

[eyeRmonkey]

I forgot to mention something else: Eventually their will be 3-4 levels of programming classes at my school. All one trimester long, but the idea is that a person could take one class each year for all four years that they are in high school. Does that change anyones opinion about which language should be taught?

[sevenhalo]

IMO -

It depends on what your cirriculum has been up to that point. I would assume that there are intro to programming courses that build up to this class. At my high school, we started in QBASIC, moved to PASCAL and then got into C++. They also offered Java. In that case, C# woud be the logical progression since the syntax is similiar. If they had started us in QBASIC and then took us into VB6; VB.Net would have made sense (the only reason I ended up in VB was because my job required me to use it).

So really, there is no universal answer. While C# (imo) would be the ideal way to go (since it requires more attention to detail), if you're not building up to it... Then there's no point jumping tracks.

---Edit-----------------------------
As long as it's not J#, you can't go wrong.

[Shaggy Hiker]

If people are likely to take all the classes, then the progression could be:

C# of VB/ C / C++ / Java or perl or etc.

This would allow those who stop after the first year to still know something.
An alternative would be:

ASM/C/C++/VB or C#

This would be a progression from low to higher level languages, and would give the student a much better understanding of the workings of the computer. However, this is high school, so I expect the progression will be something like this:

VB/TCP/LSD/whatever.

[SpeedyDog]

I think it would be stupid to have like VB, then do a C++ class... well unless it's taught differnetly. Like I'm in highschool right now, I know, VB6 and I started to learn C#.net about 10 months ago. Before I started to Learn C#.net I took a C++ class out at our local college on nights. I've never had a programming class before this, I started VB6 when I was about 9 so I had taugt myself. The C++ class started out extremely basic. and even after the entire semester, all we had accomplsihed were basic I/O, If, Switch, loops, and simple recursive functions.

But since I had already known VB6 the only difference was a bit of Syntax changing so it felt like a huge waste of time. So if you were to go to VB -> C++ you woulnd't want to like start over as a 'Intro to Programming: C++ Programming class'. Since they already know basic logic of programming from the VB class...

That's just what I think.

edit: oh yeah, I would go with C#.

-SpeedyDog

[szlamany]

All languages should be abolished and people should be made to scratch holes into cardboard squares (using their fingernails) and use those to program pedal-powered analogue machines (much like apple macs today).

That's what I do right now - do you mean that I have other options

And my legs are getting tired...

my two cents - go with VB. A person with no programming knowledge needs to have the "comfort" and "cushion" of the VB syntax to help arrive at understanding logic flow, variables - simple basic stuff like that. How to perform I/O...

but I could also say that with the complexity of VS 2005, that "cushion" might no longer exist...

btw - we have been making a living coding in BASIC since 1980 here - so it's also an extremely viable commercial language to learn. Most of our other "coding" is done in T-SQL right now - which is close to BASIC in general syntax as well...

[Shaggy Hiker]

I think it would be stupid to have like VB, then do a C++ class... well unless it's taught differnetly. Like I'm in highschool right now, I know, VB6 and I started to learn C#.net about 10 months ago. Before I started to Learn C#.net I took a C++ class out at our local college on nights. I've never had a programming class before this, I started VB6 when I was about 9 so I had taugt myself. The C++ class started out extremely basic. and even after the entire semester, all we had accomplsihed were basic I/O, If, Switch, loops, and simple recursive functions.

But since I had already known VB6 the only difference was a bit of Syntax changing so it felt like a huge waste of time. So if you were to go to VB -> C++ you woulnd't want to like start over as a 'Intro to Programming: C++ Programming class'. Since they already know basic logic of programming from the VB class...

That's just what I think.

edit: oh yeah, I would go with C#.

-SpeedyDog

Good point, if you have VB first, you probably need only gloss over the C++ syntax things. However, C++ is truly massive, and there's FAR more that you can get into with C++. Some examples would be: pointers, run-time polymorphism, multiple-inheritance, and the entire STL and STL programming.

[sevenhalo]

+Bitwise operators

(Those are in C# also, but not VB.Net)

[szlamany]

+Bitwise operators

(Those are in C# also, but not VB.Net)

Do you mean like AND and OR and XOR and stuff like that?

VB.Net is missing those?

[sevenhalo]

Off the top of my head, ShiftRight (>>) and ShiftLeft (<<) aren't in VB.Net.

AND, OR, XOR might not be either.

[sevenhalo]

I'm half mistaken...

Microsoft.VisualBasic.CompilerServices.ObjectType.ShiftRightObj
Microsoft.VisualBasic.CompilerServices.ObjectType.ShiftLeftObj

They're there, but they're not operators; they're method.

[penagate]

Bit shifting operators are present in VB.Net 2005, not sure about earlier.

[eyeRmonkey]

IMO -

It depends on what your cirriculum has been up to that point. I would assume that there are intro to programming courses that build up to this class. At my high school, we started in QBASIC, moved to PASCAL and then got into C++. They also offered Java. In that case, C# woud be the logical progression since the syntax is similiar. If they had started us in QBASIC and then took us into VB6; VB.Net would have made sense (the only reason I ended up in VB was because my job required me to use it).

So really, there is no universal answer. While C# (imo) would be the ideal way to go (since it requires more attention to detail), if you're not building up to it... Then there's no point jumping tracks.

---Edit-----------------------------
As long as it's not J#, you can't go wrong.

As far as the progession, it is my understanding that there will be 3-4 years of classes (1 trimester each) and you will probably do the same language all 4 years. I suppose the teach hasn't decided yet, so ther emight be a progression. It might also be 2 years of VB and 2 years of C# so that by the time you graduate you will be ready to learn Java in college (if you continue into college, which most people won't).

[sevenhalo]

If they were planning on teaching me java in college, I wouldn't continue on either.

I don't really like Java... No rhyme or reason, just makes me feel uncomfortable. Kind of like crystal reports. They're not that difficult, I just have never liked doing them.