A-levels to drop C, C# and PHP

[GreyWolf]

The British examinations board is dropping them from their a-Level syllabus.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/12/aqa_c_php/

Instead they are focusing on Delphi/Pascal???

I am sure rusty will have something to say...

[SykomantiS]

From above link:

The board "highly recommended" switching to Pascal/Delphi because it is stable and was designed to teach programming and problem solving. Teachers planning to use Java are warned that many universities are considering dropping it from their first year computer science programmes, "as has happened in the US".

That's what they told us at school when asked about C++/C# (back in 2003)

[Prime]

The British examinations board is dropping them from their a-Level syllabus.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/12/aqa_c_php/

Instead they are focusing on Delphi/Pascal???

I am sure rusty will have something to say...

My personal opinion is that Delphi is a relatively easy language to learn and to introduce students to programming, alot easier than say C. We did Delphi in highschool and Java was only available to those who were prepared to teach themselves or who were doing A levels. Everybody derides Delphi but I certainly found it easier to learn than C. If the guys are going into programming and software development, chances are that they will be be taught Java and some form of C in higher education. But if they are not, then for the amount of programming they are likely to ever do, Delphi allows straight forward Object Orientated Programming with out needing to fiddle in the command line - You build an Interface and write the code to link it all together. I know that the guys who do statistics in Uni, have to learn VB for Excel and Access.

This made me lol though:

"You have to consider carefully whether you should be teaching a language that could very well be taught in [higher education]," the AQA wrote.

Great logic, lets drop maths and English from the syllabus because that is also being taught in higher education. No really, Wits engineering students have to do first year course in English which includes literature. /rant

[Ron2K]

Delphi/Pascal are fine when used for their intended purposes (as teaching languages). Just please don't develop real world stuff with them.

Java isn't a good first language, in my opinion. You have to write a lot of boilerplate around a simple "hello world" app, and in a teaching environment, you then either have to explain concepts that will probably go right over the first-timer's head, or say "we'll come back to that later" - none of which are ideal. C/C++ are probably the worst choices for first languages, unless the person learning is unusually intelligent - they're extremely powerful languages, but that power comes from the coder having to do a lot of low-level tasks (e.g. memory management) by hand, and that code gets complex and error-prone very quickly (case in point: some fancy pointer stuff that I've been hacking on lately). Once you have the knowledge and experience though, then it becomes a Good Thing - my C++ skills have led me to become far more aware of what goes on behind the scenes with my C# code.

[RuadRauFlessa]

Ronnie The first language I ever dabbled with was C/C++.... GCC to be more exact. And I taught myself. If it is the first thing you touch in development it becomes the norm for you and you compare everything to it. I have to say though after C/C++ learning a new language was a complete joke. Give me any language, google and a week and I will write what you want in the language.

[Kronos]

Ronnie The first language I ever dabbled with was C/C++.... GCC to be more exact. And I taught myself. If it is the first thing you touch in development it becomes the norm for you and you compare everything to it. I have to say though after C/C++ learning a new language was a complete joke. Give me any language, Google and a week and I will write what you want in the language.

OK, when I get back next week, you will show me the Water Effects Tessellation algorithm that you are going to write in Fortran
You have Google. Go!

[RuadRauFlessa]

As long as you supply the DirectX11 gpu with hardware tesselation on a permanent basis