So /prog/, im trying to get into programming but i don't know if i should start with a high level or low level language. Basically, should i go for the complicated, high power, high level languages or should i go for the low power low level languages? I'm a beginner so i don't know if I could handle high level stuff.
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Anonymous2012-02-20 23:31
If you're doing this on your own time (this is /prog/ after all), here's something different: you could go QBASIC or similar, computer architecture + assembly, C and then Lisp, in that order.
Despite what Djikstra and the intelligentsia has to say about BASIC, it was the language most self starters used in the 80s and early 90s, you'll walk the path many have walked since the Homebrew Computer Club.
Now that you've mastered a primitive imperative language: goto, assigning values, conditionals. You will need to read about what BASIC has been hiding from you: how memory works, and now you are (almost) ready to do assembly.
After you've written some simple assembly stuff, nothing in C should be a mystery and you'll know exactly why anything segfaults.
Finally read SICP.
OR, you could do the python thing which all the universities do, but I feel its more to churn out students with some quick programming knowledge within 1-2 semesters to deal with the rest of the degree which has little to do with programming itself. The problem with this approach is the same as when they taught Java: Its too rushed, and you end up in a comfort zone with the first language. Many people who get into CS either already self started somewhere along the line above, or they had zero interest in self starting and were in it for the money at the time, one of these categories probably can't code after graduation.