Does BASIC and LOGO and FORTH are suitable as a first language for educational purposes and also are capable of being used to produce useful programs?

[Quantum Robin]

Does BASIC and LOGO and FORTH are suitable as a first language for educational purposes and also are capable of being used to produce useful programs?

If not, why not?

 

[VirtualLarry]

LOGO is useful for teaching procedural programming to younger people (like, elementary-school age), in a graphical fashion that's easy to understand.

BASIC is also useful, but beware its "unstructured" nature, relative to 'C' and 'Pascal'.

I don't think that I've ever programmed in FORTH.

 

[Quantum Robin]

Does AnandTech Community agree that BASIC and LOGO and FORTH are suitable as a first language for educational purposes and that also are capable of being used to produce useful programs?

 

[whm1974]

Does AnandTech Community agree that BASIC and LOGO and FORTH are suitable as a first language for educational purposes and that also are capable of being used to produce useful programs?

Gforth by the GNU Project:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gforth
Kturtle for KDE:
https://edu.kde.org/kturtle/
And FreeBasic:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeBASIC

Of the three, Forth is more powerful the BASIC or Turtle as you can do a great more with it.

 

[whm1974]

LOGO is useful for teaching procedural programming to younger people (like, elementary-school age), in a graphical fashion that's easy to understand.

BASIC is also useful, but beware its "unstructured" nature, relative to 'C' and 'Pascal'.

I don't think that I've ever programmed in FORTH.

I will have to check, but I believe that FreeBASIC is structured as it is a very modernized 32-bit form of BASIC.

 

[Ajay]

Does AnandTech Community agree that BASIC and LOGO and FORTH are suitable as a first language for educational purposes and that also are capable of being used to produce useful programs?

What age group.

 

[whm1974]

@Quantum Robin You might find this useful article on Forth. It is still used for microcontollers and hackers:
https://hackaday.com/2017/01/27/forth-the-hackers-language/

The Canon Cat OS is written in Forth.

 

[whm1974]

On the other hand, FreeBasic is easier to learn and use than Forth. The compiler is available for DOS, Windows, FreeBSD, and Linux. CPUs supported are x86, x86-64, and even ARM.
https://www.freebasic.net/index.html

 

[Flayed]

Most universities in the UK teach Java and C#. There is probably a reason for that.

 

[whm1974]

Most universities in the UK teach Java and C#. There is probably a reason for that.

Off hand FreeBASIC might be easier for kids to pick up and use. Some schools use it to teach programming.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Most universities in the UK teach Java and C#. There is probably a reason for that.

Likewise, most elementary-school children, and up through jr. high and HS here, aren't directly pursuing Uni. Degrees, either.

I was programming in 32-bit x86 ASM by HS, along with BASIC/Pascal/C/C++, and my own scripting macro-language stuff that I had developed.

If you're serious about going into programming as a career, you had better be able to bang out way more than a simple "Hello World" in C/Pascal, by the time you reach Uni. Levels.

 

[whm1974]

Likewise, most elementary-school children, and up through jr. high and HS here, aren't directly pursuing Uni. Degrees, either.

I was programming in 32-bit x86 ASM by HS, along with BASIC/Pascal/C/C++, and my own scripting macro-language stuff that I had developed.

If you're serious about going into programming as a career, you had better be able to bang out way more than a simple "Hello World" in C/Pascal, by the time you reach Uni. Levels.

Is Pascal still being used anywhere?

 

[Quantum Robin]

Why most universities do not teach BASIC and LOGO and FORTH as a first language for educational purposes?

 

[whm1974]

Why most universities do not teach BASIC and LOGO and FORTH as a first language for educational purposes?

BASIC at this point is an hobbyist only language, LOGO is for younger children. FORTH is mainly used by hackers and for microcontrollers.

Java, C, C++, C#, and Python are widely used. Knowing these well can and will land programmers jobs after they finished school.

 

[whm1974]

@Quantum Robin Pascal is being used in the Object Pascal form. So this is a far more useful and powerful language to learn then the three you asked about:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_Pascal
Here is an Free and Open Source compiler, Free Pascal Compile:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Pascal
And it is available on multiple platforms.

 

[mxnerd]

OP, why did you ask similar questions over and over and over?

Are you trying to be a computer languages historian or what?

LOGO/FORTH are decades old languages, hardly anyone are using them nowadays.

https://www.google.com/search?q=first+computer+language+to+learn

You get the answer that Python is the language for beginner.

I have answered your questions before. This is the last one.

 

[Greyguy1948]

On the other hand, FreeBasic is easier to learn and use than Forth. The compiler is available for DOS, Windows, FreeBSD, and Linux. CPUs supported are x86, x86-64, and even ARM.
https://www.freebasic.net/index.html

Not ARM as far as I can see. I would like to have it for Raspberry Pi.
Free Pascal is an alternative for Raspberry Pi.
Python is standard as C and C++ in Raspberry Pi

 

[Scarpozzi]

I started in BASIC in the 80's...then learned Pascal in my first CPSC class...then did C....then Java. After that, I've done more scripting than anything in perl, python, and powershell as I ended up doing Systems Administration for 15+ years...

BASIC and Pascal are great for learning...especially for younger kids. It's not as intimidating because you follow a flow and things execute sequentially. When you get into functions/methods and calling them....doing exponential functions, etc...things can get a little tough for most people to wrap their heads around it until they realize how limited things would be OR many lines of code they'd need if they did it the old fashioned way.

 

[Flayed]

I had to do a project in VBA with Excel recently I wasn't happy about it. It was ok in the end but the app ran so slow compared to doing it using something else like MySQL PHP and javascript or C# and MSQL.

Maybe learning basic is good for writing pseudo code but times have moved on now from the 80's and 90's