What programming langage should I learn ?

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25 Feb 2012, 1:12 pm

Exaleadien wrote:

Hi folks,

Yay ! seems I'm among the geeks here ^^

Here's my 10000 dollars question (for a zero bucket answer) :
What programming langage should I learn ?

I've been surrounded by computers for 20 years, but never managed to actually learn to code !
My first lines were on an Amstrad CPC 464 using basic (5 REM HELLO WORLD 10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD" 20 GOTO 10)
Since that, just a few JS functions or PHP blocks when in need of customizong a CMS.

I have dreamed of machine-code, ASM, C, C++, Perl
I've heard of Delphi, Java, Fortran, Lisp, Pascal, Cobol, Ada, Logo, Python, Ruby on Rails...

As I'm very bad at maths and logic, I'm not expecting to be an engineer. But still, I'd like to give it a go. For fun. For the beauty of computer languages.
For code poetry, trying to understand the logic and uniqueness of every of them. To be able to explain to my son how reverse engineering works, and how nothing is absolute | secure.

Please, write down below the errors you made in learning a programming language, and why. AND | OR the way you would go today, if you were starting anew. OR anything related to computer programming. Thanks !

I vote you learn C++ first. Then maybe learn a scripting language like Python, Ruby, or Perl. But if you're linguistically inclined, you should learn Lisp.

ToShinTim
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25 Feb 2012, 8:08 pm

Sorry if I'm a bit late on this one, but I find that BASIC is the eaisest, faster to learn, language of them all. If you are familiar with the TI-84 (and up) graphing calculators, they use a slight variation of BASIC.

Titangeek
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25 Feb 2012, 10:27 pm

ToShinTim wrote:

I've learned Visual Basic, yes it is easy to learn, but it's about as versatile as a 2 ton glass statue of an elephant.

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monkeykoder
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25 Feb 2012, 10:44 pm

Titangeek wrote:

ToShinTim wrote:

I've learned Visual Basic, yes it is easy to learn, but it's about as versatile as a 2 ton glass statue of an elephant.

Thank you for saying it. I wouldn't have been as polite so I didn't say anything.

Titangeek
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25 Feb 2012, 10:49 pm

monkeykoder wrote:

Titangeek wrote:

ToShinTim wrote:

I've learned Visual Basic, yes it is easy to learn, but it's about as versatile as a 2 ton glass statue of an elephant.

Thank you for saying it. I wouldn't have been as polite so I didn't say anything.

It's just an example of some one trying to design a programming language to be as user friendly as possible, resulting in it being, for the most part, useless.

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Alexender
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25 Feb 2012, 10:50 pm

I know Pbasic fairly well and plan to learn C++.
I don't know how different pbasic is from basic, but from my experience it is a good starter language.

monkeykoder
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25 Feb 2012, 10:52 pm

Titangeek wrote:

It's just an example of some one trying to design a programming language to be as user friendly as possible, resulting in it being, for the most part, useless.

VB makes me feel dirty when I code in it. I only feel slightly less dirty working in C#.NET I don't know it just feels wrong. There are just those things you can't do in it that are basically what makes programming fun.

heavenlyabyss
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26 Feb 2012, 4:59 am

monkeykoder wrote:

Titangeek wrote:

ToShinTim wrote:

I've learned Visual Basic, yes it is easy to learn, but it's about as versatile as a 2 ton glass statue of an elephant.

Thank you for saying it. I wouldn't have been as polite so I didn't say anything.

It depends what the OP's goals are though. BASIC is a very nice language to use for a short simple program. Not familiar with visual BASIC but it's probably useful for simple programs as well.

Simple doesn't always mean bad. Sometimes simple is the most efficient if what needs to be programmed is not complex.

I wish I had started programming when I was 10 years old so I would be competent with it. My problem was I started trying to learn programming in college and it was just moving too fast for me. Half the people were already programming wizards and were bored to death. I felt like an idiot.

lau
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26 Feb 2012, 6:14 am

monkeykoder wrote:

Titangeek wrote:

It's just an example of some one trying to design a programming language to be as user friendly as possible, resulting in it being, for the most part, useless.

Ah! But the one thing you certainly can do with BASIC is learn how to program - which was (essentially) the OP's question.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hello_world_program_examples

In the above list, I'd argue that BASIC is the shortest intelligible version.

(Also, follow that Wikipedia page's external link, where there's more evidence.)

(P.S. I don't consider Visual Basic to be BASIC. It's just MS being silly.)

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monkeykoder
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26 Feb 2012, 10:31 am

lau wrote:

monkeykoder wrote:

Titangeek wrote:

It's just an example of some one trying to design a programming language to be as user friendly as possible, resulting in it being, for the most part, useless.

Python is just a couple more characters... It also forces one to use better style and leave more readable code to examine and laugh at later.

AngelKnight
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26 Feb 2012, 5:36 pm

Hmmm...

Python vs. Perl... Ugh, this is religious flame-war territory. Install both, try the tutorials for both, see which one sticks, keep with it.

Ruby gets a significant amount of traction, but often Ruby-only coders end up dazed and confused when they start looking at what's actually going on (a specific machine's ISA); Matz seems to have abstracted a few too many things [1]

(Re: interest in the demoscene, the5k contest, etc.) Neat enough, but if you didn't try any of those I'm not sure that what you see from the outside-looking-in says much about what it's like to do this stuff. If you think you'd like the challenge of working in a constrained environment, then the Arduino or Beagleboard may be your thing.

In the end, working with mediocre programmers, good programmers and great programmers, what I found was that someone who had the drive to begin with, didn't need any special planning to awaken it in themselves; they found what worked. So if there's a commonality in the character of good and great programmers, it might be "applied persistence."

[1] Yes, I did just declare Python vs. Perl a hotbed of bikeshedism a sentence ago...

Exaleadien
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05 Mar 2012, 6:33 pm

Hello again !

I still follow your posts with a lot of interest. Thanks to all of you.
Speaking of Python, I recently discovered this great e-learning cursus "learn how to program a search engine in Python", a 7 weeks long class with videos and great teachers. From what I understood (I applied online and was able to attend the first class), this very first cursus is free; thought I would share it here :

http://www.udacity.com/

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