Nathan seems to think that Java is the Duplo of Programming Languages. He is beyond Java, of course:
After learning Ruby, various functional languages, and even C, I’d rather program in any of those than Java.
...But he thinks Java makes a great first language:
The thing that makes Java such a good first language is that the particular abstractions it provides are the ones that underlie the higher-level abstractions that are provided by higher-level languages... The most basic abstractions Java uses – variables and static methods - are a good basis because they correspond roughly to intuitions developed from algebra and other areas of human experience.
Apparently people who learn Java first think that static methods are a more basic abstraction than, well, functions.
Java as a first language is a bad idea. It misses what makes Java great, and why Java will still be great in five years.
Comments
”... and even C, I’d rather program in any of those than Java.”
Huh. I’ll never go back to C. It was one of my worst experiences in 25 years of programming.
And contrary to most, after some years with Ruby I’m glad being back with Java.
The best first language is LOGO – by far.
Peace -stephan
It’s so strange people keep going back to java for their first language. Actually I should blog about this somewhere (I only have photography on my website), as I gave a programming class to 14-15 year olds last year. With ruby. First the teacher didn’t like it, but when he started playing with it, he loved it. One of the best arguments was the amount of code needed for hello world: puts “hello world” Try to do that in java. Try to explain why you need all those complicated class things.