Split english and norwegian posts.

This turned out a bit different than I initially though. The english and
norwegian sections will essentially be separate. Afaict there's no
direct way to make a "combined view" listing both english and norwegian
posts. However, I think that's fine. Let's roll with this for now.

1 files changed, 0 insertions, 110 deletions

diff --git a/content/blog/2015-12-16-java-as-afirst-language/index.md b/content/blog/2015-12-16-java-as-afirst-language/index.md
deleted file mode 100644
index a6c4cca..0000000
--- a/content/blog/2015-12-16-java-as-afirst-language/index.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,110 +0,0 @@
-+++
-title = "Why Java is not good as a first language"
-lang = "en"
-
-[taxonomies]
-tags = ["programming", "java", "learning"]
-
-[extra]
-author = "harald"
-+++
-
-During the spring semester of the last year, a friend of mine was trying to
-learn Java as part of her studies. I think it's great when anybody shows an
-interest in programming so I of course volunteered to help her out a bit. That
-was an interesting experience in many ways.
-
-<!-- more -->
-
-On the one hand I found it very difficult to find ways to explain in plain and
-simple terms concepts that after decades of programming feel like second nature
-to me. Another challenge was of course to guide her towards understanding
-without giving her the answer to her excercises, especially when the email
-exchanges got rapid and I sensed the frustration rise at the other end.
-
-On the other hand though, the language itself also created some obstacles to
-learning in my opinion. To understand why, let's look at the seminal "Hello,
-World"-sample program:
-
-```java
-import java.lang.*;
-
-public class Hello
-{
-    public static void main(String[] args)
-    {
-        System.out.println("Hello, world!");
-    }
-}
-```
-
-There's not many lines of code here, and the gist of it is not hard to
-comprehend even for a beginning programmer. But there's a lot going on here
-that unnecessarily obstructs the understanding of the code.
-
-To fully understand this code, you need to be familiar with _classes_,
-_objects_, _methods_, _accessibillity_, _arrays_, _packages_ and _streams_.
-That's a very tall order for the first day of class. So what the teacher does
-is to teach the students to ignore the stuff they haven't learned yet:
-
-* Why do you have to write `public class Hello`? Don't worry about that, just
-  copy it for now.
-* What's the `public static void main`-thing? It's where you should write your
-  program, just ignore it for now.
-* What about the `args`? ...
-
-And they have to. There's no way you can get around this code without ignoring
-pretty much everything in it. That's bad for many reasons.
-
-Programming is about paying attention to details, not ignoring them. So this
-very way of introducing someone to programming encourages habits you have to
-unlearn again as you advance. Another reason this is bad is that since the
-students won't understand it, they will not be able to write it from scratch
-either. This again encourages them to use crutches like editor macros for
-generating code templates, or simply by copying something that works from
-somewhere else.
-
-Now contrast this to a programming language that was designed for learning:
-
-```pascal
-program Hello;
-
-begin
-    writeln('Hello, World!');
-end.
-```
-
-This is the same program written in Pascal[^1]. There's essentially nothing
-that even the novice programmer can not grasp here. You declare the name of the
-program, and write the code of your program between the `begin` and
-`end.`-statements. Output to the terminal is handled by a simple call to
-`writeln`, there's no need to know about streams, functions or anything else.
-
-Now it's easy to expand by introducing variables, loops, conditionals,
-functions etc. Along each step the students should be able to follow without
-having to repeat, memorize or copy incantations of unintelligible code that
-just has to be there. Once the basic concepts are learned properly it should be
-much easier to move to new languages, as it will now mostly amount to mapping
-the same concepts to a different syntax.
-
-It can of course be argued that "Hello world" is not a realistic example of
-programs that you will write as a student. You will quickly move beyond this,
-but to learn the basics the extra stuff still gets in the way. By removing the
-cruft and allowing the students to build understanding one concept at the time,
-they have a far better chance of learning anything at all. And there will be
-less bad habits to unlearn afterwards.
-
-Neither is it my intention to single out [Pascal] as the perfect teaching
-language here. [Ruby], [Python] and perhaps even [JavaScript] are also good
-candidates, as are numerous other modern languages. In fact I don't think the
-language itself is all that important. The important thing is that the student
-can understand the code she writes even from the very beginning. And that you
-can progress from there without having to bite over too many concepts at the
-time.
-
-[^1]: This is quite likely the first Pascal code I've written in 25 years!
-
-[Pascal]: http://freepascal.org/
-[Ruby]: http://ruby-lang.org
-[Python]: https://www.python.org/
-[JavaScript]: http://prog21.dadgum.com/203.html