Who Wants To Learn How To Program?

[Lz3]

Hmmz y0.. related to this thread, i am interested in programming. i am out here just to learn to be honest. I dont care to be called a hacker or a programmer or anything. I do my own thing i suppose. I know some of the basics for a few languages but nothing advanced by any standards. My question though in relation to this thread is simply, with anyone's experience what is the best language to start on? I have gone through some basic tutorials for c++, php, perl, and few others but i am struggling to determine which language would be the most useful to learn. The main languages i have showed interest in are Python, Perl, C++, and Java (in no order). I am wondering in the opinions of those with experience, what language is great to start out on? I am a pretty quick learner so i am not worried about difficulty if that makes any difference. A place to start would be great too but if not that i will happily figure all that out on my own. Any input or info though would be great.

[nosidius]

eh.......... i started with HTML, good language to make you appreciate just how everything works and how it works together, also reminds you to double check................ and again, big appreciation factor


also, i keep hearing python is a good beginner language, but it's used mainly for server related stuff.............. so game programmers beware, and also keep in mind that C++ and i know JAVA as well are both based off of C, so C actually might be useful to learn first

if someone could post a good tutorial for python, please do so

[nathandelane]

To answer both of these questions as to which language is the best to start learning on, let me first explain that there are a couple of different types of programming languages. The hype today is for RAD or Rapid Application Development languages. These are very high level managed environments and include Smalltalk, Python, PHP, Java, C#, ASP.NET, and usually have the ability to create both web and desktop applications without having to worry about the underlying API or operating system very much, including the fact that you don't need to manage memory. Another type of programming language generally falls into the category of native programming languages. Technically there are only three languages that I can think of that fall into this category, C, C++, and Assembly. Using these languages you must be careful when programming to manage all of the memory you use and know exactly what you are doing. There is little to no room for unknown conditions (these cause big headaches and bugs that are often difficult to trace). With native programming languages you can have a lot of control over the operating system, but sometimes the code isn't very portable. My advice ultimately is that if you have already started learning a language, then keep learning that language -- learning a single programming language well will open doors to learning others later on if you desire. If you haven't begun learning a programming language then I recommend a RAD language, and out of the listed languages above, I suggest Java or C# if you want to learn desktop application development, Java, C# or Python if you want to learn text-mode programming (non GUI), and PHP or ASP.NET with C# if you want to learn server-side web application programming.

I mentioned Smalltalk as well, which is the oldest fully object-oriented programming system available, but it is also very up to date. I know that Smalltalk is available in an open source environment named Squeak. Similar to this are both Python and Ruby (which I mention for the first time here). All three of these are essentially scripting languages, though they use different methodologies to accomplish their tasks, and all are considered fully object-oriented, managed, and cross-platform-compatible.

[salvaleon]

nice post..
thanks for this extra information... i really appreciate it..
thanks

[blackcross]

i want to learn how to hack and program from you...you can contact me on sum_film_4u@yahoo.co.uk

[Tsekouris]

Hi guys!I am starting now learning about programming,and i intend to start with html.could you tell me some books that would help me with this language?

[Maven_]

Free Stanford lectures:
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p ... C7F4A1F852

That one is for complete beginners and covers java. They also have c++ lectures and c lectures. I skipped the java and c++ but the c lectures (the most advanced offered) were really good and educational. Keep in mind that this is a real college course and provides everything that CS students at Standford get.

[chelewski23]

Back to the original topic. I believe strongly yes there are tons of people out there that see somone do stuff like this and their like, wow i so want to become a hacker now. And very few of them think how it is possible to do it and what it takes. For the people that just think thats awesome and suddenly want to be a hacker i believe that they will not last a couple of weeks. Because i know that they will look it up a little, get in a couple good sites, and see what it actually takes to program. I'm not saying its not that hard but, like you said, it takes practice and quite a bit of time just to learn this stuff. This is all coming from the view of a complete noob. I am very interested in learning programming. But the truth is i have no idea where to start. I did start a little though, i believe i know quite a bit about HTML and XHTML because i studied it for almost a month. But I would still like to learn more about it becuase I still think I don't know much about it. I got all my sources from http://www.w3schools.com/. They have tons of tutorials that come in handy. I went over the HTML and XHTML tons of times but i still think i am missing tons of stuff. The examples they have in here come in handy because then you can really see how it is going out. I still think it is easier to learn it from somone with much experience but this was almost as good. If anyone could maybe help me out a little more by giving me some more websites for HTML or XHTML that would be awesome. I also learned a little CSS but that confused me quite a bit lol. Thanks in advance!

[nathandelane]

Thank you all for your comments. I can see that there are many here who want to be more than just script kiddies. Of late, I have been made my company's newest Junior Programmer (junior because I have never programmed in a programmer position professionally), and I have been given the opportunity to study programmer at an even higher level, and to a higher degree than I ever have in the past. I am learning new things about programming that I sort of knew, but didn't know well enough that I knew it was more than good advice. For example, what is the object of programming in general? The object of programming is to simplify complex routines. For example, we write an operating system to simplify the way a computer works. In fact an operating system properly abstracts the underlying electronics and mechanical structures such that we don't even need to worry about how they work or what they do. All we must do is understand how the operating system works. Programming languages successfully abstract the need to know machine language. Because of programming languages, we don't need to study the opcodes for each and every processor out there, rather the programming language takes care of that for us. So when you're programming, or learning to program, keep in mind that you are trying to simplify a complex problem. If you are looking for a problem to solve, think about that as well. What is something that you could simplify by programming?

All other topics in programming are ancillary or point towards simplification. So if you write a program, and it is long and complicated, for example a program that runs everything out of the main method, then try to break it out into smaller routines and simplify them. If you have deep if-nesting, try to rearrange the if-statements such that deep nesting is not required. If you have recursion, make sure that you really need recursion, because recursion is one of the most likely places to be erroneous. If you have a large boolean statement in a single conditional, see if you can factor it out into a boolean function and call the function instead. Decreasing complexity or simplifying also should result in better readability of your program from a human standpoint. You should always strive for the best readability and the best maintainability.

These are a few of the many great things I have learned from programmers who are better than I am most recently. Many of them I learned from our software architect before he left, and in fact I enjoy conversing with software architects because of the insight that they seem to have in the realm of software engineering. I have also learned a lot from a book, that I am now going to plug, named [u]Code Complete[u] by Steve McConnell. I started out reading the first edition that I borrowed from the library, and then our lead software engineer gave me the second edition to borrow. It's basically the same book, the second edition is just updated for modern languages like Java, C# and Visual Basic .NET. If any of you are serious about learning how to program, then my advice would be to get this book, either from the library or your major bookseller. I know that Barnes and Noble and Borders both carry this book. Steve McConnell is one of the most celebrated programmers and teachers of programming at Microsoft, and don't let that turn you off, because if you do, then you don't understand software. After all Microsoft made it possible for us to use an OS on hundreds of different computers.

[kSevis]

The idea that I want to be a programmer started in me a long time ago, but while I was playing games it was mostly in the back of my head. I really can\'t overemphasize this - games are evil, or at least they were for me. When I stopped playing them, and finally had some free time, I began with C++ - we had been doing HTML and JS in IT class before that, but it was rather boring, and I didn\'t want to learn a server scripting language, not liking the idea of making websites. Since then, I have been writing in C++, sometimes looking at other things - I am hoping to move to something that is better for AI soon, seeing as that is what really fascinates me about computers.

So, all in all... I don\'t know why I programme. I just like the feeling of writing a good bit of (bad) code, and then looking at it (horribly failing at) doing what I want it to do.