No RPL?

[Han]

(12-17-2013 05:03 PM)jgreenb2 Wrote:  My point was simply that HP PPL is a variant of Basic and in 2013 there are many, many alternatives that are more suitable for both pedagogy and programming.

I think we will always have varying opinions as far as pedagogy is concerned. One could even argue that ARM assembly is better since the future generation will be seeing lots more mobile devices powered by ARM chips. But even I don't think ARM assembly is good for pedagogy and I am sure you don't either.

The simpler the language the easier it is for people to pick up programming in that language. All the bells and whistles of much higher-level languages do not make a good introduction to programming a calculator. If we were talking about a desktop PC, then your arguments are more than valid. However, the target demographic for the Prime is education, if I am not mistaken. Many of these students, if they ever do program, are not going to devote hours and hours to learning about structures, classes, pointers, etc. And those that DO want to devote such hours aren't going to choose a calculator as their platform of choice since PCs are dirt cheap these days. So for a calculator, they are likely going to want to write something very quick and dirty to do some of the more mundane tasks in their class, and that will be the extent of their programming on the calculator.

I find that HP PPL is actually very similar to C. Global variables and program declarations are done in a very similar way. Structured types can easily be attained with lists, which can have (almost) arbitrary elements -- I haven't tried all possible object types. The obvious drawback is the inability to name the elements in the structure. Having typed variables is both a blessing and a curse, depending on your needs.

Given that this is a calculator, what exactly is it about HP PPL that prevents you from accomplishing whatever calculator projects you have in mind? Beyond the annoyances of BEGIN/END etc...

Full disclosure: I don't really care for any particular programming language as long as it is fast and I can do what I want to do without too much of a hassle. For the HP Prime, I have found both to be the case (so far).