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What programming language should I start with?

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Re: What programming language should I start with?

#61

Post by davidw »

SwellJoe wrote: post #50
jey wrote: post #9

Preferred: Python. clean, elegant, pure, simple, easy. Just fine: Ruby. good, but less simple and elegant than Python. Good if you want to deeply understand the principles of being a programmer but don't care about being very practical at the start: Lisp (yes, Lisp can be practical, but it's trouble for a newbie) Avoid: Perl, PHP, BASIC variants. These cause brain damage.

"Avoid: Perl, PHP, BASIC variants. These cause brain damage." Many perl mongers, myself among them, would disagree. But maybe the brain damage has set in and I can't judge properly. But, really, you're showing serious ignorance placing Perl in the same sentence as PHP and BASIC. Perl is on the power continuum somewhere just shy of Lisp, and along-side Ruby (possibly even above it; Perl 6 will place it squarely above…

Agreed - I don't use Perl any more, having grown disillusioned with its messiness a long time ago, but it's certainly much more of a serious language than PHP.

Re: What programming language should I start with?

#62

Post by iamelgringo »

I'm teaching my 14 year old nephew programming, and I chose Python. Why? Because it's interpreted, so you get the instant gratification of writing command line programs. You also get IDLE bundled with the .exe (on windows) which shaves a bit off the text editor learning curve a bit.

Also, I think that Python's beginner documentation is better than Ruby's. The beginner books for Python are a bit easier to follow than the Pickaxe book. Sure, Why's Poignant Guide is fun, but unless you understand programming already, you'll probably be lost.

Ruby does have HacketyHack, which is fun and the tutorials are really well written, but it's still a little buggy. Some of the code examples in the tutorial are broken, causing a lot of frustration for a young noob. In another 6 months or a year, I'd suggest Ruby and HacketyHack, not right now, though.

Re: What programming language should I start with?

#63

Post by PindaxDotCom »

brianmckenzie wrote: post #33
pg wrote: post #23

Just curious, but would anyone recommend Javascript?

JS is better as a second language, because of DOM issues. It's better for a beginner not to have to worry about those. It is very convenient for beginners because it's built into the browsers, and many people learn it concurrently with something else. You could do a lot worse than JS. For a first language, look at Python/Ruby and choose what you're most comfortable with.

If you're absolutely new to web programming then the first thing you must learn is HTML. Some may think thats a given, but I think it's important to point out. If you can't get your head around HTML, you're not going to be building websites.

Re: What programming language should I start with?

#64

Post by nostrademons »

dfranke wrote: post #42
michaelneale wrote: post #40

Python is certainly a good one (ruby as well) - "Learning Python" by Lutz & Ascher I think is suitable for someone like you (and it is not a bad reference as you get more experienced). Ruby can be a bit stranger, people like to be "clever" in ruby, and then there is the hype. As for mind expanding, I like scheme - as taught by MIT in the SICP series (you can watch the videos on google video). It would be interesting…

Alright, as much as I love Haskell, do not attempt to learn it as a first language. Repeat: do not attempt to learn it as a first language. That's like learning to swim by taking a submarine into the Marianas Trench and then opening the airlock.

I wonder if Haskell is as hard for first-time programmers as for experienced ones, though. There are high school kids in #haskell that know way more and probably have an easier time learning than I did. They don't have any bad habits to unlearn.

Also, many "tricky" Haskell concepts (algebraic data types, lexical closures, first-class functions, programming without state) are actually quite logical if you've never been exposed to the C/Java way of programming.

Re: What programming language should I start with?

#65

Post by portLAN »

rms wrote: post #16
mudge wrote: post #4

Do want to learn Web programming? PHP is probably the easiest programming language to learn for server-side web programming. I've read several books on PHP and looked over a bunch, and a lot are pretty good, but one of the best is this one: http://www.amazon.com/PHP-MySQL-Development-Developers-Libra...

come on, let's not get in the habit of modding someone down because we disagree with them.

I'm modding it down to save anyone from being misled into PHP.

Re: What programming language should I start with?

#66

Post by gb »

pg wrote: post #23

Just curious, but would anyone recommend Javascript?

Javascript was the language I learnt with more or less. I think it's quite a good choice, but it is very easy to write "bad" Javascript, especially when it comes things like eval(). It seemed wonderful when I first discovered it, but not until some time later did I discover the kind of mess it can cause.

I was also introduced to OO (of sorts) through JS... I perhaps wouldn't recommend this so much, it was incredibly confusing for me at first. I didn't have any real grounding in OO principles before I started though, so perhaps that would have helped.

Re: What programming language should I start with?

#67

Post by jamongkad »

davidw wrote: post #61
SwellJoe wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Avoid: Perl, PHP, BASIC variants. These cause brain damage." Many perl mongers, myself among them, would disagree. But maybe the brain damage has set in and I can't judge properly. But, really, you're showing serious ignorance placing Perl in the same sentence as PHP and BASIC. Perl is on the power continuum somewhere just shy of Lisp, and along-side Ruby (possibly even above it; Perl 6 will place it squarely above…

Agreed - I don't use Perl any more, having grown disillusioned with its messiness a long time ago, but it's certainly much more of a serious language than PHP.

I mean really what made you say such things about PHP? not being a serious language like Perl? This is not an attack mind you, but I'm curious to know what Yahoo, Flickr, Wikipedia, and perhaps to some extent Facebook seemed to have missed when they decided to use PHP for server side stuff. What's with all the PHP hate here in YC anyways?

Re: What programming language should I start with?

#68

Post by jamongkad »

dfranke wrote: post #28
mudge wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like what?

Dumping things into global variables. Using regexes to hammer anything vaguely resembling a nail. Thinking in for loops when you should be thinking in higher-level abstractions.

That may have been the PHP of old and sadly it is still practiced up to this day. But I'm telling you man PHP5 and it's implementations will blow alot of criticisms out of the water.

Re: What programming language should I start with?

#69

Post by rms »

SwellJoe wrote: post #54
rms wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try both and see which one feels better. For what it's worth, Ruby programmers are more in demand than python programmers.

"For what it's worth, Ruby programmers are more in demand than python programmers." Only in one small segment of the industry (the one that hangs out here). Python jobs in almost every other area are more common. And, of course, Perl is still more popular than both. And PHP and Java and C# dwarf all of the interesting languages.

Are startups still fighting for Ruby programmers in the Bay Area?
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