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Originally Posted by chris31
My school only teaches Java since that is the language used for the AP Computer Science exam. I started learning C in 8th grade and then Java in 9th.
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I took a similiar route.
I started scripting for the Q3 Radiant engine in about 8th grade, picking up C++ in 9th by reading mid/late 90s era programming books. I took what I was seeing from looking at source code from python + my TI 83's language (almost identical to Fortran), and I translated it into what I was learning in C++.
In 10th, I was one of 6 students enrolled in AP Computer Science A, learning Java, which led to AB and Advanced Computer Studies this year. Last year, I started work with Fortan and C for robotics and science fair projects.
In this day and age where software is truly marketting in some form and very little is needed to be coded from the user, kids that are joining APCS classes tend to be self taught C/C++ scriptors or people who "drag and drop" program off copies of VB.
When I first programmed, books still tended to focus on more in line programming and I had to learn how memory was allocated, where instructions were sent, how instructions were interpretted, and how pointers were handled real fast with an early GNU compiler.
Everyone that I meet now that joins the robotics programming team shys away from us FRC team coders and collect around the Vex team's Visual C computers. It's kind of a shame to see the newer visual programmers so fearful of something that comes so natural to us.
Our team has started teaching some of the Vex visual programmers how to write code effectively in C for our FRC bot. It's slow and sometimes painful to unteach what they've learned from dragging and dropping.