Quote:Original post by Samith
What's the deal with people having trouble with parentheses? I don't remember ever having that much trouble with them. Didn't your code editors highlight parentheses pairs?

Even with highlighting it strains the eyes.

Plus highlighting requires interaction in order to visually grasp the structure of the code; you can't just look at it and see what's going on. Another downside is that highlighting typically only highlights one grouping at a time.


Anyone who says that scheme allows people to focus on the problems rather than fighting with syntax is fooling themselves. The parentheses insanity is far more difficult to handle than learning a few keywords here and there.

Hooray for syntactic sugar.

To tell you the truth, I think *ECMAScript* would be a fairly decent choice for a beginner programming language. Several reasons:
- It's syntax is very forgiving. Forget a semicolon at the end of a line? No worries, it's all cool as long as there is a newline character to at least differentiate between lines. Forget to use the var keyword when declaring a variable? Again, fuhgedaboudit, the language compensates. Yes, declaring variables with var keyword is semantically different than with it, but it's not going to matter to a beginner.
- No need to match return types, any function can return a value at any time.
- No need to worry about converting between data types, the language does automattic type coersion. In my own time as a programming tutor, I found students struggled with the concept of data types the most. Incidentally, the concept of scope was a big sticking point.
- The syntax *is* roughly C-like, and C-like languages account for the vast majority of languages used in industry. It's like training wheels.
- It's usefull in a wide variety of different applications: Websites, scripting, it's even possible to write .NET apps in it. Basically, it's a language the kids can grow with.
- None of the "public static void main" stuff, none of the "#include <library_they_won't_remember.h>" or "imports some.kind.of.junk.*;" or "using A.Whole.Lot.Of.Confusion". Granted, import statements are required to use .NET features in JScript.NET, but by the time you get that far it shouldn't be a big deal to introduce the concept.
- Wide adoption means there are tons of examples online.
- Its use in web pages can get beginners writing compelling projects almost immediately. It is well known that learning labs centered around "real world" applications help cement concepts more readily.
- It supports procedural, functional, and object oriented programming, without requiring any one in particular. Admittedly, it's OOP is a little funky, but a number of different implementations (specifically JScript.NET) correct that.