This article, poetic as it is, is very wrong, imo.
I got my start in programming working with qbasic as a 12 year old, then graduating to some VB programming. I loved being able to go to any house, quickly type up a program I knew by heart, then mess around with new ideas I had. So I'm pretty nostalgic towards basic as well.
Having said that, today's situation is better. Anyone who wants to can get started on any computer with some simple HTML. In fact, people can come very close to replicating the look of their favorite sites, without needing anything but their computer and access to a few tutorials. Not to mention the fact that the other languages (Python, Ruby) are much better. Better for working, but also better for learning. I don't understand what his problem with Python as a beginner language is: it lets you do actual stuff you want to do much more easily, which is especially important when learning.
> Anyone who wants to can get started on any computer with some simple HTML.
"Lots of people wrote in to say that HTML and JavaScript are the new BASIC. NO!!! You can’t be serious!!! So people have to write two languages now, which are intertwined in an almost inexplicable and unfathomable way? This doesn’t do it.
I disagree with that though. Especially the sentence "Hello World should be one line". In html, it is. You create a new text file, put the line "Hello World" in it, then you can open it up in your browser and voila. You've got something everyone recognizes: a website.
Of course the more you code, the harder it gets, and eventually you have to add CSS, then JS, and then all hell breaks loose. But you can coast pretty far on basic HTML, with either no CSS, or inline CSS. And I'd argue that that's the direction we should be sending people just getting started in programming.
> I disagree with that though. Especially the sentence "Hello World should be one line". In html, it is. You create a new text file, put the line "Hello World" in it, then you can open it up in your browser and voila.
It depends. It's one line in the sense that 'it works.' It's not one line in the sense that "it works but enables quirks mode and it won't necessarily work right equally in all browsers unless you do all this stuff ..." and that's why I dislike HTML/CSS for learning. Yeah, in the simplest cases, it's kind of easy, but it can get really complex really quickly.
That's not even counting the fact that markup is not really programming, and if you'd like to add some, you've now got TWO languages to learn, HTML + Javascript. And then you might want to do something server side, so now you've got three.
Yeah, but as a beginner, you don't need to see the complexity.
Mind you, I'm not comparing HTML to other languages for learning, I'm comparing it to QBasic as a "first try at programming" language. The basics had their own problems.
I got my start in programming working with qbasic as a 12 year old, then graduating to some VB programming. I loved being able to go to any house, quickly type up a program I knew by heart, then mess around with new ideas I had. So I'm pretty nostalgic towards basic as well.
Having said that, today's situation is better. Anyone who wants to can get started on any computer with some simple HTML. In fact, people can come very close to replicating the look of their favorite sites, without needing anything but their computer and access to a few tutorials. Not to mention the fact that the other languages (Python, Ruby) are much better. Better for working, but also better for learning. I don't understand what his problem with Python as a beginner language is: it lets you do actual stuff you want to do much more easily, which is especially important when learning.