Re: On programming

[Ludwik Kowalski <KowalskiL@MAIL.MONTCLAIR.EDU>]

But is it not true that tasks which help people learn elementary
physics by creating their own algorithms are always very
simple? It is usually a matter of 50 to 100 lines of trivial code.
Your picture (see below) makes it clear that one can start using
Basic after investing just several hours. One weak is sufficient
to turn a motivated student into a quite competent programmer.

Don't we need a tool of that kind for people who are not going
to be professional programmers? Learning True Basic early in
life is like learning how to use a pencil to draw and to write on
paper. Most of us never become artists or calligraphers or real
programmers.

Ludwik Kowalski

Sorry, the clear picture from your original message was messed
up when I pasted it into this reply. Why does this happen. The
same thing happened to the listing of my program two days ago.
On my screen all comments were originally aligned nicely one
below the other. But blank spaces were messed up when I
received that message from phys-L. What should one do to
preserve blank character strings?

John Denker wrote:

> Another take on the "better" versus "worse" issue:
>
> I like to draw a graph of what you get out, versus what you put in.  Basic
> has the nice property of a small x-intercept:  simple things are easy.  The
> problem is that complex tasks become difficult out of proportion to the
> true complexity of the task.  C++ is just the opposite:  writing the
> simplest possible C++ program takes a certain investment.  The advantage is
> that you can attack more complex tasks, even extremely complex tasks.  The
> language doesn't get in your way, and helps you out in ways that Basic won't.
>
>          |                /
>          |               /
>          |              / (c)
> results  |    (b)____  /
>   out    |    __/     /
>          |  _/       /
>          |_/________/_______
>               effort in