Re:Retiring Python as a Teaching Language
by hajile on Sunday January 07, 2018 @03:09PM
(#16092393)
You don't hear people say C isn't a serious CS language, but it is about as typed as JS.
C is weakly typed and has implicit conversion. JS is weakly typed and has implicit conversion.
You most certainly mean static types, but even there we have issues with C because passing void pointers is a thing for generic ADTs. This is even weaker typing than JS offers (and that's without talking about the interactions with function pointers).
An even stronger argument against your position on static types is SICP. It's written in scheme, but I have yet to find an introductory book more packed with CS fundamentals. You can read it multiple times and learn new things (very rare for a book to speak to both the experienced and the novice).
If static types were really important, Java, all the C's, and most common be CS language would never be used and Standard ML would reign supreme (perhaps it should anyway).
Types are simply one weapon in the war between elitism and pragmatism.
C is weakly typed and has implicit conversion. JS is weakly typed and has implicit conversion.
You most certainly mean static types, but even there we have issues with C because passing void pointers is a thing for generic ADTs. This is even weaker typing than JS offers (and that's without talking about the interactions with function pointers).
An even stronger argument against your position on static types is SICP. It's written in scheme, but I have yet to find an introductory book more packed with CS fundamentals. You can read it multiple times and learn new things (very rare for a book to speak to both the experienced and the novice).
If static types were really important, Java, all the C's, and most common be CS language would never be used and Standard ML would reign supreme (perhaps it should anyway).
Types are simply one weapon in the war between elitism and pragmatism.