Ask HN: What language should I learn first? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What language should I learn first?

#21

Post by edgeorge92 » Fri, Aug 15, 2014, 1:54 PM UTC

osconfused wrote: post #15

Learn Swift. Mobile is the future.

Swift will not teach you the fundamentals of programming

Re: Ask HN: What language should I learn first?

#22

Post by dragonwriter » Fri, Aug 15, 2014, 1:54 PM UTC

osconfused wrote: post #15

Learn Swift. Mobile is the future.

Mobile may be the future, but Swift is limited to one vendors mobile platform, while there are a ton of languages (C#, JS, Python, Ruby, even Haskell) that you can use for mobile that aren't limited to one vendor''s platform. Plus, "mobile" usually has a server component, and those other languages can also be used for the server end.

Re: Ask HN: What language should I learn first?

#23

Post by jensnockert » Fri, Aug 15, 2014, 1:55 PM UTC

babo wrote: post #17

cafard wrote: post #5

What is your preferred computer? If Windows, then I must agree with myddle's recommendation of Python.

I don't get your comment. Python is great on each platform but Windows where you must put some extra effort to get it running.

Python is just some extra effort. While Ruby is much more of a pain on Windows.

Re: Ask HN: What language should I learn first?

#24

Post by riquito » Fri, Aug 15, 2014, 1:55 PM UTC

facorreia wrote: post #3

I believe that you can't go really wrong with any of the languages offered at Codecademy. If you have to pick one I would suggest JavaScript. It's not uncommon for projects to involve another language + JavaScript, so the syntax knowledge should be useful for years.

If you want to learn to program, and not to program for the web, then I'd say Javascript is a bad choice. Apart from his quirks, you can't really just learn Javascript: you would learn HTML and CSS with it, it's overwhelming (compared to other languages).

Personally I'd go with Python to learn the joy of programming, and then some C (or Rust) to understand which problems were lifted by the higher level language. Javascript is too useful in the Web to not learn it, and then go functional to open your mind. Well, it's a long road :-)

Re: Ask HN: What language should I learn first?

#25

Post by davewiner » Fri, Aug 15, 2014, 1:57 PM UTC

JavaScript. Everyone has the runtime already installed.

Re: Ask HN: What language should I learn first?

#26

Post by joemccall86 » Fri, Aug 15, 2014, 1:57 PM UTC

Whatever you choose, learn git along with it. It helps to answer the question, "This used to work, what did I do to break it?"

Also, call me sentimental but I learned C/C++ as my first language and would recommend it. I don't see a codeacademy class for that though, and it's not really perfect for web development.

If you find that codeacademy isn't working out, I've also personally used codeschool.com and had great experiences there.

Re: Ask HN: What language should I learn first?

#27

Post by jimktrains2 » Fri, Aug 15, 2014, 1:58 PM UTC

agxbr wrote: post #19

Doesn't matter, pick one and move your focus to algorithms and data structures.

Exactly. Don't learn to write code, learn to program. Even BASIC or PHP will do; learn how to think about problems and how to bare different tools on it.

Re: Ask HN: What language should I learn first?

#28

Post by Pururim » Fri, Aug 15, 2014, 1:58 PM UTC

Pascal.

Re: Ask HN: What language should I learn first?

#29

Post by aioprisan » Fri, Aug 15, 2014, 1:58 PM UTC

Pick JavaScript or Ruby. JS because you can go full stack and can move on from some client-side work to full stack pretty easily with node.js. Ruby because it had beautiful data structures and I'm not a fan of forced whitespacing.

Re: Ask HN: What language should I learn first?

#30

Post by jimktrains2 » Fri, Aug 15, 2014, 2:00 PM UTC

osconfused wrote: post #15

Learn Swift. Mobile is the future.

That assumes he has a Mac. Many people do not. I could say the same thing about Java and Android, and that dev environment at least runs on all platforms.