[NTLUG:Discuss] Corel donates Linux to DISD

[Bug Hunter]

On Sat, 17 Jun 2000, J. Reeves Hall wrote:
<snip> This argument has come up before.
> 
> Pardon my bluntness, but Visual Basic sucks for teaching kids to
> program. It's designed to allow programmers to rapidly create Windows
> applications, with little attention to speed, efficiency, or careful
> programming habits. It accomplishes its intended purpose, but that does
> not involve being a good teaching language. In addition, Visual Basic is
> not cheap, and it is proprietary. School districts are rarely flush with
> cash, so Visual Basic is an exceptionally poor choice unless Microsoft
> chooses to donate it. Everyone has their own idea of what exactly
> constitutes a good teaching language; my vote is in for Scheme (which
> I'll be happy to debate off-list).
> 

  I agree to a great extent.  However, any progam can be good no matter
the language.  It is the skills of the programmer. :)  I don't have a
problem with teaching kids VB.  I DON'T LIKE MICROSOFT!!!!  Just in case
you were wondering.  It has evolved into something very useful.

  Now that I've got a flame war going,  I want to mention a book. ISBM
0-7897-1993-2, Special Edition Using Star Office by QUE publishing,
$34.95. It has a _very_ good couple of chapters on StarBasic. I was able
to program up one of their examples.  

  StarBasic works almost identically to Visual Basic.  With a VB book, you
can actually write code that works, using much of the VB book's info.  It
is not perfect.  The code does go with the document, such as a StarWriter
document.  For small projects, it would be very nice.

  StarOffice is free to schools and businesses and people.  

  I use C++, C, and Assembly every day.  I have written in Basic, Fortran,
Java, Forth, Pascal, Lisp, VB, and assembly on COP400, 8080, Z80,
8088/86/286/386, 6800, 68000. I like C/C++ best and 68000 assembly best.

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