

Unix makes Computer Science easy - mqt
http://glomek.blogspot.com/2007/12/unix-makes-computer-science-easy.html

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iamelgringo
I've actually thought for quite some time that programing might be taught best
via shell scripting.

By starting off by learning shell, you'd get all the basics like iterators,
functions, variables, etc... You can then extend the newbies knowledge with
stuff like regular expressions, pipes (parameter passing) etc.. At the same
time, however, you'd be teaching a new programmer an incredibly useful set of
tools that they can build on.

It took me 3 semesters of Java before I could code non-trivial programs. In
one semester of Unix shell scripting, I wrote a flat file database with a
decent user interface. I learned more about programming in that one semester
than I did in 3 semesters of Java.

~~~
downer
Leave it to a Java programmer to extol the virtues of shell scripting.

Java's really that bad, is it?

~~~
iamelgringo
:)

I haven't willingly used Java since those classes, however.

I'm just saying that for the basic stuff, you can actually learn quite a bit
just by learning how to write shell scripts. And the learning curve is quite a
bit shorter than in Java before you can get something remotely useful done.

