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Discussion on: What is the simplest code to explain a loop?

 
alchermd profile image
John Alcher

Yep we love teaching Python cuz it's the best language IMHO to teach... simple expressive syntax.

I share the same sentiments! I offer tutorials to my fellow CS students and Python is my go-to language for explaining basic programming constructs.

Ideally though, a student should be well-versed on at least one scripting language (Python, PHP, JS, etc.) and a compiled one (Java, C++, C#, etc.) since some concepts are harder to visualize on certain languages. Like, functional programming is better taught in JS than C++ and pointers are better taught in C than PHP.

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yaser profile image
Yaser Al-Najjar

Totally agree with you, each lang serves better in explaining some concepts.

A bit regretting that my first lang was C cuz I spent lots of time understanding pointers and arrays instead of going into actual domains problems :D

Same goes to Python, I see many people explaining data structures in Python while in the very beginning they don't solve an actual problem cuz Python has lists already! That's why C is the way to go IMO for data structures.

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slavius profile image
Slavius • Edited

In for loops you can empoy this little trick to emphasize decrementing from max to 0:

int max = 10;
for (i = max; i --> 0;) {
  printf(".");
}

It is just pretty-formatted i-- > 0
What it does it decrements i and makes sure it's > 0 in the comparison part of the for leaving out the increment/decrement part.
Works the opposite way (end to start) so it's not suitable for processing lists where ascending order matters.

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alchermd profile image
John Alcher

That's a neat trick! But it looks something more of a trick to get the shortest solution to a programming quiz rather than a practical solution, IMO.

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slavius profile image
Slavius

Let's call it a syntactic sugar. It makes the code shorter, more visual while still keeping the same functionality; but may make someone puzzled about what it does on first sight as it's not common.