[techtalk] Re: [grrltalk] Linux for Kids???

[Nicole Zimmerman]

> Also, OO is a rather advanced abstraction.  I didn't get it the first
> time I tried to pick it up (with a rather poor C++ book, not Dietel &
> Dietel).  Of course, I also didn't have an instructor to go with the
> reading, but procedural is still easier to think in than OO.

Hmm, I don't think so... I think it depends on who you are. C++ was the
first language I learned (then I went back and did vanilla C), to me
thinking OO and thinking procedural are just two different modes of
writing code, being a lazy person I prefer the OO mode :o)

Some people totally hate deitel&deitel, I have both the C and the C++ book
and think they're pretty good as far as learning the language goes... they
might need some more meat in terms of theory in order to be a good chunk
of how you learn to hack code in C/C++.

> trip, again, it has its uses.  I got accepted into Pre-Engineering at
> UW, I intend to go into Computer Engineering (most college's offer it as
> EE/CS), so it is nice to learn more about how the actual hardware works

Good luck actually getting in to any engineering major, they are all
competitive (tm, officially). Friends of mine that did very well in high
school and then went to the UW found themselves turning elsewhere after
their first couple of years when they tried to get officially into an
engineering major. The engineering department accepts an enourmous amount
more pre-engineers than it does official engineering majors.

One of the many reasons I did not choose the UW, even though it's close to
home. 

-nicole