[geeks] Java as a first language

[der Mouse]

> Being able to program in C very well implies an understanding of how
> computers work.

Yes...but it also requires an understanding of when to lock that
knowledge away and program on the abstract machine the language
defines.

> Regardless of what the "agile programming" neens and functional
> programming academics would have you believe, it is still Very
> Important that your programs run well on actual hardware.

Not quite.  It's very important to be able to write programs that run
fast on real hardware.  Being good at programming also requires a
knowledge of when performance *isn't* important.  Spending two hours of
your time to shave 15 milliseconds off code that's executed once per
human keystroke is (almost!) always a very poor investment.

> All that said, the language you choose isn't nearly as important as
> how you program in it.

Amen.  I've seen it said that it's possible to write FORTRAN in any
language, and I believe it - I once got about two orders of magnitude
of speed out of some Lisp code by converting it from FORTRAN expressed
in Lisp to the native Lisp idiom for the operation being performed.
But doing that required that I have my head around the Lisp idioms and
how to use them.

Conversely, it's possible to write Lisp in any language, too, and it's
sometimes the right thing to do.

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