Delphi, MS-Office exclusivity in SA schools reversed

So what about all the teachers who was trained in Delphi. I bet a lot of schools also prepared for the change.
Just another sign that our education system is in serious trouble.
I was at the point to start training my son (Grade 10 next year and doing IT) in Delphi. Good thing I waited.
 
LPCPT said:
So what about all the teachers who was trained in Delphi. I bet a lot of schools also prepared for the change.
Just another sign that our education system is in serious trouble.
I was at the point to start training my son (Grade 10 next year and doing IT) in Delphi. Good thing I waited.
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I think you (or your son for that matter) dodged a big bullet there. You're right, "what about the already trained teachers" but the fact of the matter is that the software development world is moving really fast, and Delphi are in fact dead. You'd do way better teaching your child something else - and by something else you should research what is the best open source and/or widely available languages out there.

We did Pascal at school, and even though it taught the basics, it wasn't something I could use after school AT ALL! Because by the time we ended school was the death of DOS and the dawn of the second and third generation Windows (Graphic).

My suggestion would be to do a language that:
1) Can be used for something real-life even after school (with Delphi, if you don't buy Delphi after school then sorry, game-over). Java is at least free to use. PHP (even though it's old) runs a major part of all websites online. Sure, .NET is an option, even though I'm not a Microsoft lover. Heck there's even things like Ruby-on-Rails.
2) Get something that you don't NEED a specific OS for. That's one of the reasons I dislike Delphi and .NET... because they're Windows bound. So if your kid gets a job at a place that gives him a Mac - or he doesn't have the money for a Windows OS or a Mac and installs Linux, then he's screwed? No, rather pick something that's cross platform. Java is nicely cross platform. So is PHP, so is Ruby, etc.

Hit google up a bit and see what you find. Again, I think you dodged a bullet.
(Don't get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoyed Delphi at University... but that was in it's last few years of life)
 
The Department of Basic Education is basically not knowing it's @rse from its elbow
 
We did delphi when I was still in school. While it may not have been a language that one would still use in industry I still think it is a great launch platform for learning to code. A nice intro to many other OOP languages.
 
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ph4t3 said:
We did delphi when I was still in school. While it may not have be a language that one would still use in industry I still think it is a great launch platform for learning to code. A nice intro to many other OOP languages.
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+1. At school level it's about teaching programming concepts not a qualifying in a specific language.
 
Pascal / Delphi is the best learning language in my opinion.
 
I programmed some big systems in Delphi for many years. It really taught me how to properly architecture a system and to write proper OO code, within multiple tiers.
Some of the systems I see now is just plain crap and falls over every second week. Programmers does not even know about exception handling and proper optimizing.
So I think Delphi provided a very good base for me.
With that said, I recently programmed some stuff in C#. Not big but reasonable for a challenge.
All I can say, it was a breeze moving from Delphi to C#. I applied all the same principles an techniques and it all fitted nicely together. It all worked so seamlessly. This happened without any training or reading up, except for google who became my very good friend.
It not in the language or the tool, but in applying the principles correctly. That's what we need to teach the youngsters.

I am not a fan of Java, it's just very complicated and put people off easily.
When you start out to learn, you need something simple.
My 2c
 
Nope Delphi is an absolute ****up for schools - the reasons have been covered in many threads. The only justification for Delphi over Pascal is the "graphic user interface and visual programming" argument which is hokum. Pascal as a computer science instructional language is justifiable - teaches concepts etc ... and is a highly structured programming language - I think Java has advantages as an IT course but honestly schools can teach IT using scratch and making programming books available - Python, Java, C++.
 
Paul Hjul said:
Nope Delphi is an absolute ****up for schools - the reasons have been covered in many threads. The only justification for Delphi over Pascal is the "graphic user interface and visual programming" argument which is hokum. Pascal as a computer science instructional language is justifiable - teaches concepts etc ... and is a highly structured programming language - I think Java has advantages as an IT course but honestly schools can teach IT using scratch and making programming books available - Python, Java, C++.
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You seem to contradict yourself.
Delphi is the dev tool that uses pascal as the underlying language.
We need a simple language and some visual stuff. Delphi fits the bill here.

It all depends how you use it. Using it for RAD is not advisable, but can be useful to quickly demonstrate a concept.
I still think the versatility and simplicity built into Delphi was it's downfall.
Too many people tried to do things quick and fast and Delphi allowed them to do it with disastrous consequences.

Used correctly, it is a very powerful dev tool.
 
While I've got nothing against pupils learning any form of programming I am glad schools are not be force to fork out thousands of rands for licensing fees to MS. If they do Microsoft should do something about it and allow all these schools to receive licensing for free. That will never happen though.
 
My first computer science teacher did all the theory on how computers worked, the history and what a language is, etc. By the book. The next quarter we had a new teacher, fresh out of varsity.
First thing he did was give us the game Sokoban and tell us to play it until we win. The goal of the game is to move though a room full of boxes to a certain area - you had to figure out the order and pattern to move the boxes to move - its been done to death.

Then he showed us Logo and had us play with that, then start doing homework.
And only then did we even do a 'Hello world' in GW Basic.
Later we delved into Pascal - still a beautifully structured language for me.
I survived three years of Cobol when studying, and also then started doing Delphi and the rest.

That Cobol was my saving grace - I pick up new languages and systems easily, hit the ground running fast.

The goal of the first few years is to learn the basics of programming syntax and structure and the relevant concepts.
Only then do you start teaching them how to really use it.
 
Delphi is a product suit built on top of Object Pascal

The entire problem with Delphi is that it moves completely away

I witnessed this:
I was a CompSci pupil ("learner" in the new parlance) for Std 7,8 and 9 (doing Gr 10,11 and 12 a year early) using Pascal. Programming really isn't my thing but I have a really decent foundation from Pascal - cruised through a C++ refresher course this year. The guys in my grade (so doing comp sci in the ordinary course) did Pascal for the first 18 months and then had to be introduced to Delphi. The guys who stuck with Pascal as much as they could and used it for their project and really did as little Delphi as possible got on fine but it was a completely useless addition set. Half of the grade however finished comp sci the poorer. The grade below them had to start with Delphi but also got the Pascal books and it was a ballsup. When I was in matric I did tutoring for the then Grade 10s who had only Delphi and it was completely atrocious the poor sods really had to deal with all of the crap of Delphi and its pseudo RAD nature before learning anything about programming.

If somebody presents themself as a Delphi programmer I immediately know that they are an idiot. On the other hand if somebody has Delphi as part of their tool set I want to know the course of the torture.
 
Paul Hjul said:
Delphi is a product suit built on top of Object Pascal

When I was in matric I did tutoring for the then Grade 10s who had only Delphi and it was completely atrocious the poor sods really had to deal with all of the crap of Delphi and its pseudo RAD nature before learning anything about programming.

If somebody presents themself as a Delphi programmer I immediately know that they are an idiot. On the other hand if somebody has Delphi as part of their tool set I want to know the course of the torture.
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Seems to me you had very poor training.
Don't blame the tool, blame the fool behind the tool.
 
Mmm... Thanks Paul for calling me an idiot - I've been designing and coding systems in Delphi/Turbo Pascal since 1989 (Then it was Turbo Pascal 5.5, with OOP additions). As a point of interest, what language do you prefer?

I don't particularly care what language the department teaches the kids, as long as it covers the basic data structures. Unfortunately for a bunch of newer language fan boys that means it immediately disqualifies their language of choice, as it "protects" the programmer by hiding the unfathomable pointer. I've trashed my share of environments because of an uninitialized pointers, and I'm still here.:confused:

The purpose of Computer Science at school IMHO is to teach the kids how to think analytically and explain the basic concepts to them. I don't think they should touch an Object until they're Grade 10 or 11. That way they can get procedural programming under their belt first, along with the other fun elements such as function pointers and closures.

It is a pity that this has fallen in to a language debate, complete with all the heated and religious arguments of "my language is better than yours".
 
LPCPT said:
Seems to me you had very poor training.
Don't blame the tool, blame the fool behind the tool.
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And there is the magic problem - you seem to want the curriculum to provide "training" rather than an education.
But actually no I had very good "training" the school performed wonderfully in comp sci matric exams consistently years before and after had and some very competent programmers in a multitude of languages cut their teeth in the schools computer lab from before the mess of Delphi. My sister who had a different "instructor" (and was at the sister school) similarly suffered under the yoke of Delphi a few years after I finished school; and you could look at the curriculum to see where things were six months into the syllabus of a Pascal vs Delphi dispensation.

Delphi is manifestly idiotic, it is locked to a single paradigm (Windows essentially), fails as a RAD suit (dies dismally to Visual Studio) and can be outclassed by MSAccess for database applications. Delphi has absolutely no practical application beyond certain legacy clients who are locked into using it and it destroys the pedagogical advantages that Pascal (which was designed as a teaching - as opposed to training language) brought to the table requiring learners in a schooling environment to spend more time dealing with Delphi crap than actually learning anything about programming. The ONLY justification for Delphi is as an "introduction to visual programming" course or module - like UNISA has - as an alternative to Visual Studio.
 
LPCPT said:
...
All I can say, it was a breeze moving from Delphi to C#. I applied all the same principles an techniques and it all fitted nicely together. It all worked so seamlessly.
...
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"Anders Hejlsberg (born December 1960)[2] is a prominent Danish software engineer who co-designed several popular and commercially successful programming languages and development tools. He was the original author of Turbo Pascal and the chief architect of Delphi. He currently works for Microsoft as the lead architect of C#[1] and core developer on TypeScript."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Hejlsberg
 
willo said:
Mmm... Thanks Paul for calling me an idiot - I've been designing and coding systems in Delphi/Turbo Pascal since 1989 (Then it was Turbo Pascal 5.5, with OOP additions). As a point of interest, what language do you prefer?
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I quite like Turbo Pascal - because it was the bane of my programming for 3 important years but both C++ and C# fascinate me.
You don't seriously introduce yourself as a "Delphi Programmer" do you? In fact your equivalence of Delphi and Turbo Pascal underlies the error.

Because your line "I don't think they should touch an Object until they're in Grade 10 or 11. That way they can get procedural programming under their belt first" contradicts the Delphi case altogether. The first thing the compsci school course (which doesn't start in Grade 8 but rather Grade 10) is dealing with objects and layers of stuff they don't understand in order to generate a hello world program.
If you were to advance the argument that we should start comp sci in Gr8 properly and throw in some Scratch and what not and then have the Matric curriculum include Delphi as a wrap up from the procedural programming tradition into the object orientated tradition then you wouldn't find an rebuttal if there wasn't a costs concern. The point is the DoE set course to replace Pascal and procedural programming education with Delphi and object orientated programming through Delphi.
 
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