easy introduction to perl

[Nic Gibson]

On 05/10/2007, Adrian Howard <adrianh at quietstars.com> wrote:
>
> On 5 Oct 2007, at 12:00, Nic Gibson wrote:
> [snip]
> >> This may be slightly contrarian - but I have personally found it
> >> easier to introduce references/objects earlier rather than later.
> >> Especially if folk have experience in other programming languages.
> >
> > I think *only* if they have experience.
>
> Yeah... not so sure about that myself... I don't think OO is actually
> as difficult for newbies as many folk think it is. Especially if you
> can give people a framework to start with.

No, OO isn't that hard for newbies.  In the past I've found it easier
to explain OO to non-programmers than to experienced procedural
programmers (we're talking 15 years ago here when it wasn't hard to
find someone who was an experienced programmer with absolutely no
exposure to OO).

> Oh year - I introduce testing right from the start too. Pairing & TDD
> is a _really_ nice way to introduce languages.

I think 'near the start' would be good but there is a level of
expertise one needs before one can actually write a meaningful test.
Some of the folks I've taught on intro to perl courses need the first
two days before they could have a chance of writing a test. However,
we do pair people immediately (as anyone who's done an LT course and
ended up sat with someone truly weird will know).

nic

>
> Adrian
>


-- 
Nic Gibson
Director, Corbas Consulting
Editorial and Technical Consultancy
http://www.corbas.co.uk/