[Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Lars]

> On 14/10/16 08:30, Michael Schnell via Lazarus wrote:
>
>
> Of course there are decent drawbacks regarding relying too much on RAD
> and about not really understanding the fundamentals behind it. But in the
> end the addressees are non-computer engineers.

The big issue with teaching using a RAD tool, is welding the program logic
into the onclick events, instead of decoupling the logic in separate
procedures that can be reused elsewhere.  RAD tools are superior at
prototyping... I can't believe how awesome they are at that. They are
inferior, however, when it comes to bad habits being brought on.  With
this warning, RAD tools can still be very useful for writing solid
programs, as long as one knows this warning ahead of time.

When I first learned delphi I made the mistake of putting code in the
onClick events and similar, and then when you expand your app later you
realize all that code is welded in place and cannot be reused outside of
the events.

Of course decoupling the logic from the GUI leads to more layers of code.

How I got rid of my bad habits when I first learned delphi: I started
writing console apps with no object oriented programming, no events, and
learned that not everything is a click event in computer programming.

People late in the game (learned programming when GUI's were available)
and have no experience with console mode apps will earn some bad habits
because of the GUI oriented programming. Those with experience in other
areas of programming such as old Dos programs, web programs (basically
like a dos or unix console program) will learn different ways of
organizing code without everything being tied to a GUI event driven code.

I suppose even doing a plain Win32 API app with no delphi code (pure win
api) would help someone learn how to organize code from a second opinion
view, without being forced to use the event driven system you were given
by the RAD tool.

Of course, also learning other programming languages helps (although, IMO
learning too many brain dead languages and hip cool ones will not help, as
much as others claim... Basic programmers from the 80's or 70's still
think in GOTO's and line numbers)