-> DW> Well, maybe. In my own case, I had learned to think very
-> logically by DW> studying various branches of science and philosophy,
-> before I ever did DW> any programming.
-> Are you talking in high school?  I believe few folks get out of high
-> school with well honed logic skills.
Oh no! University. Years and years of it!
-> I know that once someone has learned *a* programming language, others
-> come easier; that has been studied and confirmed for most folks.  I
-> don't know if anyone has looked at any particular order.  It somehow
-> seems intuitive, but is by no means certain, that starting with an
-> easy language such as BASIC would make transitioning to something
-> like assembler, a bit easier.
I dunno. I seem to recall, when I was learning assembler, that I had to
make a conscious effort *not* to "think BASIC". It's a bit like the
difference between riding a horse and driving a car. You have to
communicate with a horse at a fairly high level, taking into account
what he thinks he can do, and so on. In some ways, this can be good.
He's not likely to run straight into a brick wall, for example. In
others, it can be bad, since you may want him to do something he's never
done before, and which he is reluctant to try. In some ways, this is
like programming in BASIC. In assembler, on the other hand, things are
much more mechanical, like driving a car. If you drive at a wall, you
will crash. You have to think in a very simplistic and mechanical way.
Even higher-level languages than BASIC, such as Prolog, require a
different kind of thought again. Instead of telling the machine exactly
how to perform a task, you try to define the task and let the machine
figure out how to solve it.
Anyway, I suspect we have argued this topic to death. To make any
further progress with it, we would need access to observational data on
people's performances in learning programming languages. Such data may
exist, but I certainly do not have any to hand.
                            dow
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