which progrraming language to learn first

[Stephen R Laniel]

On Fri, Jul 15, 2005 at 11:45:04PM +0500, Mustafa Abbasi wrote:
> here i think perl is better.
> but everyone seems to favour python.
> are they radically different or just similar cuz you know i only have about 20
> days to learn this and i have no previous shell scripting or programming
> experiance.
> i am quite sure i can learn both but then i have no idea what i am getting into
> so i am probably wrong.

20 days is not enough time to learn any programming
language, if you have no experience coming in.

Here's what you need to do with 20 days left: set a small
task for yourself, and solve it in whatever language you
choose. With 20 days of work to do, I don't think you're
going to get enough of a feel for *any* language to make it
matter which one you choose. 20 days gives you enough time
to learn the basic structure of a computer program; it
doesn't give you time to understand the ins and outs of,
say, object-oriented programming. And it doesn't give you
time to learn all the intricacies of individual languages.
You'll get high-level pictures of what programming is like,
which is good to have.

So you'll need to know

* functions
* loops (while-loops and for-loops)
* scope (local variables versus global variables)
* hashes or maps (the former is Perl's name, the latter
  Python's)

Start there. That's a good way to go.

With 20 days, I think the question you ought to be asking
is: what task should I set for myself that would let me
understand a little programming?

Not sure if 20 days is enough, but try writing a web script.
Create a page with a form on it, have the user submit some
data, process the data somehow, and spit an answer back to
the user. Specifically, try writing a script that asks the
user when he was born and tells him how many days old he is.

Then put the script up here and we'll critique it for you.
Sound like a plan?

-- 
Stephen R. Laniel
steve at laniels.org
+(617) 308-5571
http://laniels.org/
PGP key: http://laniels.org/slaniel.key
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