Programming... WTH

SephStorm

lol, i'm sure some of you may have seen some of my posts trying to figure out what programming language to start with. Well, it seems its a fairly common question. Unfortunatly it seems that one of the common answers is that "it doesnt matter what language you start with, as long as you learn the basics/theory, then you can learn any language with ease!" Well, unfortunatly it seems that noone has a resource for learning these basics without starting with a specific language... The only exception appears to be colleges which have some "introduction to programming" or something to that effect, before they go into specific languages...

So, does the internet have any resources for us?

Zartanasaurus

Learn C the Hard Way

Learn Python the Hard Way

boredgamelad

They're not saying you should learn the basics and then pick a language--the point people are making is that while you're learning your first language, you should also be learning the basics. The language you choose to start with doesn't matter so much as long as you start learning from the ground up and develop your programming fundamentals.

GOZCU

take this course; teaches python and course is very high quality. You will see a lot of things while trying to learn the essentials of a search engine.

Udacity - Introduction to Computer Science Course (CS101)

generally; you may start from any language to learn. Ever language has its pros and cons. after you learnt the basics, try to learn algorithms and data structures.( tons of books are available)

Slowhand

Personally, I'm a big fan of learning a C-based language as your first. The way my most recent computer science instructor did it was to teach his Introduction to Programming class in C, then move into object-oriented programming with C++, and eventually move to data structures and algorithms in C++. You could, conceivably, do the same thing in Java, or learn any other language you please, but the basics remain the same.

It seems like you may have been getting the advice that you should worry about the theory and then pick a language. I'm going to say it's the opposite: pick a language and stick with it, learn all about it, learn all the programming theory you can while working with it. It's only when you move to another programming language you begin to see all the universal concepts that translate.

Akaricloud

To me it really depends on what your end goal is. If it's to learn some programming, become better at scripting, ect from an administration side then I would recommend Python. If you're looking to become a programmer then C or C++ depending on what level of knowledge you have about programming.

SephStorm

Slowhand wrote: »

Personally, I'm a big fan of learning a C-based language as your first. The way my most recent computer science instructor did it was to teach his Introduction to Programming class in C, then move into object-oriented programming with C++, and eventually move to data structures and algorithms in C++. You could, conceivably, do the same thing in Java, or learn any other language you please, but the basics remain the same.

It seems like you may have been getting the advice that you should worry about the theory and then pick a language. I'm going to say it's the opposite: pick a language and stick with it, learn all about it, learn all the programming theory you can while working with it. It's only when you move to another programming language you begin to see all the universal concepts that translate.

I like this idea. I wll likely start with python or C, and since Zartan provided us with wonderful resources for both, whoo!