Hello peeps. As someone who hasn't been lucky enough to be immersed into the world of programming when he was young, and has a hard time getting into it with net ressources, I need an easy and fast-learning language to start off with.
Any recommendations? Cheers!
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Christy McJesus!DcbLlAZi7U2005-04-10 12:28
Python is probably the best language available for your purposes. It's very easy to learn and powerful enough that you can go from learning to writing interesting programs in literally no time at all.
Since it's a scripting language it comes with an interpreter so you can quickly test things out instead of going through a lengthy "write, compile, why won't it compile?, test, whoa what the fuck" cycle when all you want to do is see how a small feature works.
</propaganda>
I can't vouch for the usefulness of that tutorial link; I tried to find one that teaches programming concepts in Python. This one advertises itself as exactly that but I haven't used it.
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Anonymous2005-04-18 8:59
i vote Pascal or Java. Probably Java, pascal is old. Pretty much how i learned. Pascal is a good way to get the "Programmer" way of thinking, and java adds Classes and a C++ like syntax. Then you can move up to C++ :)
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Anonymous2005-04-18 11:10 (sage)
Same question has been brought up over @ 4-ch.net a while ago (or at least a very similiar):
Well, the easiest language to learn is probably Visual Basic.
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Anonymous2005-04-20 12:25 (sage)
sage for vb
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Anonymous2005-04-20 16:18
>>7
You may not like It, neither do I, but its true. VB is really easy to learn and especially if you are a beginner it just feels nice to be able to drag'n drop together a little GUI.
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Anonymous2005-04-21 3:50
>>8
I will agree slightly here. Starting out programming, you don't want to be monkeying around with GUI libraries, but neither do you want to be limited to command line programs. VB (and by extension, VC++, VJ++, VC#) is awesome for throwing together crap UI for crap programs (which makes it perfect for learning). Especially considering how fucking horrible Win32 programming is, and how tedious other GUI libraries tend to be.
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Anonymous2005-04-21 6:19
>>8
I know a lot of programming languages but never cared about VB before. I tried it once and I almost puked: it is one of the worst language I've ever seen.
If you want something easy try Ruby or Python. Of course you won't have the GUI eye-candy but you don't really want that if you want to "program"?
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Anonymous2005-04-21 13:11
Best to start by learning first order logic and graph theory. Once this is done any programming language can be mastered within a month.
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Anonymous2005-04-21 19:04
See, this is why qbasic was a good learning language for me, even though it was crappy spaghetti-code basic. I could get lines on the screen and music beeping on the speaker in like 10 lines.
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v32005-04-22 17:19
VB or VC#, I think. They are realy easy to study for a first time
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Anonymous2005-04-24 1:39
Visual C# or Java I think. Pascal and C are older imperative languages that make it difficult to implement some higher-level design patterns. The only real issue with C# and Java is that the technologies are more geared towards the web once you start expanding beyond the standard language and into applied development (i.e. .NET or J2EE).
Personally, I think C++ is a good middle ground.
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Anonymous2005-04-24 8:22 (sage)
It looks like some people here don't quite understand the concept of "first language".
And no, Java isn't a good first language. I pity the poor sods who "wanna program", never bother to learn a thing, then go to uni and have to learn Java first. If you're one of them, F* off.
Hey, I was one of those guys! The reason I never learned though was because I tried to learn C++ right off the bat. Then I got to uni and had to go through 3 years of agonising Java. I've recovered now, but I'm bitter that no one pointed me at Python or something all those years ago.
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Anonymous2005-04-24 17:07
>>16
Poor guy. Both for Java (dear god, make the pain stop) and for trying to learn C++ first. Didn't you dabble in QB for a while though?
I think C++ was my fourth language (QBasic -> Asm -> C -> C++), and yet it still confused the hell out of me. In the end I concluded it was a result of the book I was using. The concepts are easy, and the implementation is not difficult, but a good book or mentor is absolutely critical...
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Christy McJesus!DcbLlAZi7U2005-04-24 21:22
>>17
I wasn't counting QB as an actual language :)
The problem with C++ is it's a fantastically complex language. That and I, in all my 14 year old wisdom, bought C++ For Dummies. Literally half the book was the author calling functional programmers idiots and talking about nachos. Worst thing was, he thought C was a functional language.
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Anonymous2005-04-24 23:00
The only good Dummies book was the original Dos for Dummies. All the rest suck.
How to Tell a Shitty Book for Dummies:
a) does the book title have a "Dummies" (or "21 days" or "24 hours") in it anywhere?
b) Does it have lots of screenshots and cartoons?
c) ...
d) Profi^H^H^H^H^HWas it in the bargain bin of a chain?
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Anonymous2005-04-24 23:16
>>18
That's because C++ for Dummies is a crap book. He even says at the beginning, start with C for Dummies, becuase I ain't going to teach you. C for Dummies is much better, but that guy spends the last chapter of volume 2 saying why OO was stupid :D. That's what I learned C from, and may explain why I'm a crap programmer.
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Anonymous2005-04-25 15:08
easy programming language? my best guess is VB...i took it as an elective course after all the ones required by the curriculum (C++, COBOL, JAVA, etc.) and it is not difficult AT ALL to manage after having to work my way through those i said before... so i guess you can start off that way.. if you dont want to spend money on VSTUDIO try an EXCEL MACROS... good way to practice some skills (IMO)
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Christy McJesus!DcbLlAZi7U2005-04-25 18:15
>>21
Hahaha people still teach COBOL? That's awesome! In a really bad way!
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Anonymous2005-04-26 7:07 (sage)
I guess they forgot to include English. *cough*
So they did the next best thing and included COBOL.
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Christy McJesus!DcbLlAZi7U2005-04-27 5:14
I heard English is a subset of COBOL, confirm/deny?
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Anonymous2005-04-27 10:44
Lies, all lies!
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MrPnut !PiT3HFilu22005-04-27 10:50
>>22
yes... unfortunately i had to take COBOL a my Univ couple of years ago... its cool though the first thing the professor told us was that it was ancient and useless.
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Anonymous2005-04-27 17:16
Can't understand no one else mentioned Delphi yet.
- Both procedural programming and object oriented programming.
- Drag and drop GUI building.
- Extensive help file with plenty of examples.
- Pointers are available, but at the same time Delphi doesn't lean heavily on them like C does. This helps people ease into using pointers.
- Console support for those tutorials of the 'hello world' caliber.
- Syntax transitions easily into a C syntax when switching to C later on. Well, apart from the for and case statements anyway.
- Highly structured and strict language, which is paramount for people getting into programming to learn a proper coding style.
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Anonymous2005-04-27 18:46
Delphi is a language that everyone's heard about, but nobody has used.
Here's my story as a student: I begun programming @ uni and it was Java: Don't do it! You don't even know what a loop is yet they want to tell you about objects and static methods... When a program wasn't compiling, I was adding "static" everywhere and most of the time, it would compile (while killing all the real methods I had to create, the program would not give me the good results :(
After 2 lessons, I forgot this and learned C by myself, then C++, then Java. It's not that hard if you have the motivation and a good book. In the end, I knew 3 languages (and how they worked) while the other students could not even understand what a static member of a class was.
Don't try to learn OO in a first language, it's too confusing, and I was even more confused because Java forces you to write objects all the time, even for f(x)=2*x.
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Anonymous2005-05-04 18:04
Jepp I just have to agree with >>30
I can only say about 30% fail with loops at first when learning Java if the Teacher tries to tell you over and over that everything is an Object.
I really can't undertand why the teachers even try that. They could just teach all the controls structures first and then the OO stuff.
(And yes your right I didn't make a study about how much people failed with the loops but it's an estimted value.)
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Jon2005-05-08 13:01
Thanks for the pointers guys. I'm fairly comfortable with control structures and basic functions now (in C). I don't have that much time to invest so I'm checking out Perl and perhaps python over the summer (thanks to >>29 for the pointers).
I'll work my way up to more complex languages. Basic scripting languages are probably sufficient for what I need to do right now.
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Christy McJesus!DcbLlAZi7U2005-05-09 4:19
>>31
Especially since not everything in Java is an object. Which turns out to be really frustrating when you try to actually do stuff.
If you want a real OO lang, consider Ruby. Very powerful, intuitive object system (ripped straight out of Smalltalk) and everything really is an object. Despite this you can still write simple programs without having to know anything about OO.
Plus you need to know Ruby if you want to hack Rails.
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Anonymous2005-05-24 4:38
I have to agree for a first language, Java bad Delphi good.
FIN.
Be careful what you call a "scripting language", it's somewhat of a diminutive, very high level languages like Python and Ruby are being used for much more than what's usually considered "scripting".
These languages in one sense it might be a "glue" language -- high level libraries are built on top of other languages like C and Python/Ruby/Perl act as the glue to weild these libraries. These libraries would be built for problem domains were C is the only way to get the job done efficiently. In problem domains were the high level langauge doesn't get in the way there's nothing wrong with using a "scipting" language to implement everything in an application.
>>35
Also Python compiles to bytecode before it runs, so "scripting" isn't even accurate.
>>36
Not for a beginner it's not :P
Dive into Python is what I've used, and it's great if you already know how to program and you're sick of books that walk you through elementary concepts.
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Anonymous2005-05-30 11:03
For the love of 4chan /b, don't start with Java. Q(uick)Basic would be a much better start. Pascal probably evern better. But keep it simple, and learn it procedurally.
You could also try PHP, but not Perl (it gets insane).
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abez!XWEgiX8ArQ2005-06-20 21:53
Start with Squeak/Smalltalk. Even kids can code in Squeak. Don't learn an immediately useful language first otherwise you'll mess yourself up.
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Anonymous2005-06-21 3:54
But I wouldn't go for OO stuff at all. Start from a lower level; OO introduces needless complexity and requires more attention and experience.