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+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