Hello /prog/ i am new to programming and new to /prog/ im just wondering what language should i start off with and if there is
any good guides/tutorials for said language
SICP is an awesome book about CS and it will help you develop a lot of awesome programming-fu, and Lisp is an awesome language, EXCEPT! that the casual newb will struggle likely with it, quickly get frustrated and abandon it convinced that SICP is shit, that Lisp is a shitty language, and that SICP/Lisp fans are all faggots like you.
Anyway, >>1-san, the hipsters at lolRacket think that if you have trouble understanding SICP, http://www.htdp.org/2003-09-26/ will tutor you starting from the very bottom, at a very slow pace. Its main problem, besides from its slow pace, is being overly monotonous. But you should have problems with that.
>>10
I wouldn't either recommend HtDP to someone new to programming, because of the fully parenthesized prefix syntax and is being overly monotonous.
And I'm one of those ````hipsters'' at lolRacket''.
But, if he learns C (or worse, C++) now, the resulting brain damage will be eternal and inevitable.
The problem is that there's no real start for programming, and that you can't learn how to program in one week.
>>13
Computer Science.
Programming in CS, CS is not programming.
>>15
Started at 11 with C and gotos (don't do that), at 13 I started crafting my Unixy tools, at 14~15 I read my SICP and got into real programming, and started studying CS on my own after that.
14 is the best age to start programming, your mind is still fresh and malleable.
Note that you'll not be able to program a video game in less than two years, without knowing also knowing lots of mathematics. If you get into programming now, it should mainly be because you're interested in pure programming.
anyway, OP, I recommend Python. It's easy, powerful, lots of resources on the web and you can do many things with it. Write gui apps with wxPython, write games with PyGame and build professional websites with Django.
Just my personal preference. Heading back to /g/ now
C won't cause him brain damage, it'll force him to learn how his program is working underneath all the damn syntax and make him learn from experience how not to shoot himself in the foot. Quite frankly, if you can't program in C and be good at it, you shouldn't be programming at all.
Name:
Anonymous2011-06-06 23:21
>>37
My friend Aneel who used to a Senior Software at AOL, and prior to that, one of the original Xigo engineers, never learned C. So would you tell him that he shouldn't be programming?
You know I have realized that /prog/ is not trolling when they recommend SICP. At first I thought they were. I soon enough realized that all the Lisp bashers were teenage virgins who had never tried it before because they were too busy getting raped by Java or C++. SICP has to be the greatest thing to ever happen to me in programming. If I could start over I would, and with a functional programming language. OO Programming skews the way you think about programming. Start with functional programming, trust me. It will pay off in the end, and you will be thankful. SICP might be a little to hard to understand at first (it was for me) so if you find it is, then start with something a little more basic, but for fuck's sake, don't start with an OO language.