RE: Suitability of Lua as a First Programming Language?

["John Hind" <john.hind@...>]

Argg! I am not normally a language bigot, but if there is one programming
language that ought to be banned it is Forth. It would certainly be a
disastrously awful teaching language. I had to do a project in this language
some years ago and I would not be exaggerating when I say it nearly drove me
to a nervous breakdown! A colleague on the project described Forth as "the
write once, read never language" and certainly it was a major challenge to
understand code you had written a few hours ago let alone what anyone else
had written. Reading Forth code is like trying to translate a book written
in a foreign language armed only with a dictionary itself written in that
language - you look up a word, then you look up a word in the definition,
then a word in that definition, six stack levels down you've completely lost
track of where you started!

One thing I agree with on the web site you reference, Forth is certainly a
"unique programming language", but that alone surely makes it a poor choice
for teaching?

> -----Original Message-----
> From: lua-bounces@bazar2.conectiva.com.br [mailto:lua-
> bounces@bazar2.conectiva.com.br] On Behalf Of Heath N. Caldwell
> Sent: 22 September 2009 20:20
> To: Lua list
> Subject: Re: Suitability of Lua as a First Programming Language?
> 
> On 2009-09-22 15:07, Patrick wrote:
> > Not to hijack this thread but if anyone has any links to books
> related
> > designing desktop applications I would love to receive such a link.
> > There are plenty of GUI design books but not much on backend side
> other
> > then pure DB stuff. I assume everything still uses MVC but I still
> > useless here I don't really know how to divide up the logic and lay
> the
> > App out.
> 
> I have recently started reading Thinking Forth [1], which I think is
> pretty awesome and you might like.
> 
> http://thinking-forth.sourceforge.net/
> 
> --
> Heath Caldwell - hncaldwell@csupomona.edu
> Operating Systems Analyst - California State Polytechnic University,
> Pomona