Why is GW-BASIC still teaching in schools?

Question

I do not know about the USA and Great Britain, but in India schools still teach GW-BASIC. Yes this:

10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD" 20 GOTO 10 

As far as I know, even writing assembler is easier than this mess of language. It is easy to replace with something like Python, which will make it easier for students to understand the basic concepts of programming and help them understand the logic of what they do better.

Answer 1

Because Basic is the very ... basic introduction to von-Neumann architecture , that is what all modern computers and (by extension) programming languages ​​are based on.

Think about it:

• Line numbers = memory addresses
• Variables = CPU Registers
• Current Line = processor instruction pointer
• Goto = Transition Command

Answer 2

Ever try to teach programming to someone who doesn't know what that means?

I worked for 4 years. For a full launch, GWBASIC is not bad. You can get the most out of the least effort while maintaining basic ideas, such as:

• The computer finishes one statement before starting the next. (Beginners tend to think that the computer does everything “right away.”)

• The program is similar to something built from toy toys. There are only a few basic parts, and you assemble them to make you do what you want. (Beginners often think, because the language has words like IF and PRINT, that it will simply understand what they are typing.)

• Variables are a key concept. They have a name that you give them, and they have values ​​that they get when programs start. It's complicated. Name and value are not the same thing, and there is a difference between write time and runtime.

Once you get through some basic concepts with GWBASIC, you can start introducing a more modern, disciplined language.

Answer 3

GW-Basic taught me in 7th grade about 10 years ago. I found this to be a great language and easy to experiment with a beginner. Even non-pc-freaks had few problems learning the language.

In my opinion, this is a great tool to motivate beginners to learn more advanced programming languages.

Answer 4

As for teaching in India and why they use GW-Basic, I can only guess (from the USA):

• It is cheap. Perhaps they got old equipment with GW-Basic. Hey, it's there, it's free, why not use it to educate children.
• The teacher knows this. If the teacher knows / understands this, he can teach it.

In the previous I met several people who immigrated to the United States from India and explained that the first time they worked with Windows, when they arrived here, none of the schools (not even at college / university) had this. It may depend on the school they went to, but it may be a matter of equipment available. Perhaps this use of the GW-Basic that you are talking about works the same way: they used the technology they used.

Perhaps this means that they are, well, resourceful.

As for how good it is that they learn something so old, I'm not so sure that it is such a good idea. But, as the famous (American Western) folk wisdom says: "Do what you have, it will eventually pay off." It is better to expose them when they are young.

Answer 5

It's funny how fast people forget.

Remember the first time you struggled with the concept of a cycle? With the idea of ​​a variable and how did it preserve values? With syntax memorization?

Basic has a relatively small built-in syntax; it has fairly flexible structures for loops and other constructs.

I think all this is "free." It helps in learning.

Loose is very bad for good, stable programs. You want very little flexibility, you need templates that you can count on, and very few options (even if you don’t know that this is what you want, you will understand this as soon as you have to lead a team of 5 developers from another a country).

If any of them was not really considered, the reason why we don’t like the basic one is not the lack of “power” or speed - this is because it is lost - the same reason that is good for teaching.

You do not start running, you learn to crawl into a shaky look, then you stumble, etc.

But as soon as you run sprints, you really want to make sure that each leg is exactly where you want it, and if the guy in front of you decides, he suddenly wants to start crawling, you are screwed.

Of course, if you run along the track alone or in a small team in synchronization, it does not matter what you do. Feel free to use any language you want :)

Answer 6

GW-Basic is a great language for new programmers. If someone has never done any programs before, something simple, like GW-Basic, will be much easier to understand compared to something like Python. In addition, Java has much better support for object-oriented programming compared to C ++. More commercial applications are currently written in Java than C ++. [ source ]. Therefore, I would say that it is good that they switch to Java on top of C ++.

Answer 7

If someone is really interested in programming, they will take what they learn in this class and apply it to a language learned in due time.

There is also something to say for a start in a language that is much less powerful than Java or C ++.

Answer 8

so you don't learn to use goto

Answer 9

It is easy to learn, the school is not aimed at teaching new technologies, the school wants to teach the basics of computer science.

Answer 10

I think that at my school GW Basic is still taught at the age of 6-7 years (out of 10), and the reason is that little girls and boys cannot understand anything more complicated than the basic :)

Moreover, at my university we are programming in QBasic o_O omg, which do you say? yes, I was joking too :) oh, and they promise one semester of C ++ in 4th grade .. yay!

Answer 11

I am from India and GW-BASIC was my first language back in 1995. It was fun. Now everything has changed. Another variant of BASIC is now being studied at my school, QBASIC is the first language. Then students switch to C ++ and Java in standards 8,9,10. Hope Python takes some time.

As a man has already indicated, his simple inertia. This is not a very cheap equipment, which is the reason. Its just a mentality to continue to do whatever happens. Session.

Answer 12

As for the GW-BASIC, I could not agree more. That's why the Ruby programmer, known only as "_why lucky stiff", created an awesome learning platform for the Hackety Hack program. He actually had quite a lot of information about teaching programming for young people at the Art and Codex symposium:

http://vodpod.com/watch/2078103-art-code-symposium-hackety-hack-why-the-lucky-stiff-on-vimeo

Answer 13

I think GW-BASIC is a good tool for teaching children programming. I have been teaching programming to schoolchildren for about 10 years. GW-BASIC provides convenient training without going into technical details.

If we use some hi-fi programming language to educate children, they will learn a programming language, not programming. Using GW-BASIC, it’s easy to teach programming, and we can focus on programming methods rather than discuss the structure of programming languages. It has very simple and English syntax, so students can easily understand it.

Another thing to keep in mind is the BASIC interpreter, so we can follow different line instructions and execute any part of the program, which gives students a clear understanding.

The GW-BASIC direct mode provides great help in explaining the concepts of memory, since we can control the changing states of variables (addresses and memory values)