[Year 12 SofDev] Records and Arrays

[David Dawson]

What a fascinating discussion this is! (No I mean it!)
When I started teaching Pascal in 1998 - I was so confused by "records"
- and came to see them as "customised data types" and - having just
learnt some Java and C++ - I figured they were really like Classes - or
even objects.
In any case I have not come up against this mysterious "data structure"
in the other languages I have explored - in C they are constructed and
can be called anything - and I bet that the library file could be
renamed ""list_o_stuff" - even in Pascal.
I prefer PHP at present and in PHP - like so many languages - the thing
people seem to miss is that in "weakly typed languages" everything just
starts as a String and is dealt with "contextually" as someone cleverly
pointed out earlier. If there are numbers we wish to multiply the
language figures this out by our operations - very smooth!
An array is a list defined by a computer language to store temporary
Strings! Some languages limit these - if they insist on strong variable
typing.
I really hope records are just amended out of any reference in the study
design.
IMHO they died 10 years ago!

David Dawson
Head of Information Technology Learning Area
Head of Learning Technologies
St Kilda Rd Campus
Wesley College 
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Melbourne 3004
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Mob 0425 718147

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