The students also learn how to design board games and video games

An After-School Program Teaches Teens Java and Python::The students also learn how to design board games and video games

    • @aluminium@lemmy.worldEnglish
      24•1 year ago

      I think Java is still a good language for beginners. The tooling around it is really good and it catches lots of issues at compile time.

      • @starman@programming.devEnglish
        1•1 year ago

        In my opinion, C# would be better for this job. It is similar, but has many features that simplify the code, such as top level statements, LINQ, collection expressions and stuff like that. It’s also way more popular in game development and that’s what most teens are interested in

        • @aluminium@lemmy.worldEnglish
          15•1 year ago

          I seriously don’t get why Python is so popular for learners. Its a weird ass very isolated language syntactically. The libraries for it are great but still.

          • Free Palestine 🇵🇸English
            5•1 year ago

            JavaScript sometimes can be weird as hell. That’s why I prefer Python. I don’t know, for me it seemed logical from the beginning. Java definitely ain’t better.

            • @aluminium@lemmy.worldEnglish
              7•1 year ago

              Its probably bias to what you are used to the most. I think for example copy pasting stuff around in C like languages is way easier than the tab mangling one has to perform in python.

              Also python has so plenty of bizarre (i.m.o. not very readable) syntax beyond that. Like

              def __init__(self) : for a constructor

              the most verbose lambda syntax for something that should make it less verbose to inline functions def x = lambda x: x + 1

              logical operators being words while numerical and comparative ones aren’t def x = not a or (b <= c)

              private methods not really existing thus needing underscores as a crutch

              I don’t wanna hate on python, the ecosystem and libraries around it are amazing but people saying python is the gold standard in terms of syntax and “readability” is questionable i.m.o… There also is a reason why many of new modern hyped languages (which don’t have to abide to backwards compatibility to some other language like mojo) like Rust, Kotlin, Go, Zig, and Swift are C style langs.

        • @bionicjoey@lemmy.caEnglish
          6•1 year ago

          “Java is dying” is what people who’ve never actually worked as a dev for a big company think.

            • @Maalus@lemmy.worldEnglish
              1•1 year ago

              Okay, and this is relevant how? One company doing stupid shit doesn’t mean a language is dying - it’s the basis of enterprise basically everywhere

              • Free Palestine 🇵🇸English
                0•1 year ago

                Many companies are migrating away from Java. Have you seen any big projects started in the last 5 years that use Java? I haven’t. Java is only used to either maintain existing stuff or to migrate away from even older shit like COBOL or Perl.

                • @Maalus@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  2•1 year ago

                  Yeah, I have seen plenty of big projects started in Java. Hell, I’ve written code for at least 10 of them. Just because you personally don’t see something happening, doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Java is as popular as it gets, being in the top 3 languages used. It’s not going away and it is not being deprecated any time in the future.

                • @bionicjoey@lemmy.caEnglish
                  2•1 year ago

                  Many companies are migrating away from Java.

                  And way more aren’t. Especially among big market cap companies.

        • @FourThirteen@lemmy.worldEnglish
          4•1 year ago

          Java is absolutely not dying… unfortunately. Billions of people depend on spaghetti code written by corporations every day. I think Java will be the next COBOL. It won’t die and it’s unfortunate.