which progrraming language to learn first

Magnus Therning magnus at therning.org
Sat Jul 16 08:33:40 UTC 2005


On Fri, Jul 15, 2005 at 10:33:06PM +0500, Mustafa Abbasi wrote:
>i have recently started using linux and since its my summer vacations i
>wantedto learn a language.

Welcome to the Linux camp :-)

>i'll be honest part of this is so that i have a certificate to show
>when i apply to colleges but mostly its cuz i wanna learn.
>so what language should i start with.
>i was thinking C or visual basic but i am not sure if visual basic can
>be used in linux ( can it???)

VB can't be used. Full stop! Kidding aside, I _really_ don't think VB
should be a the first lagnauge you learn. It will most probably drag you
down a path where you'll end up having to re-learn programming later on.

C is a good language to know, but I don't think it's a good beginner's
language. You'll be 

People have been suggesting Perl. Personally I've stayed away from it
just because it has a horrible syntax. It's possible to write readable
Perl code, but it's far too easy to write code that's totally
incomprehensible, even for the original author. Perl is probably good to
know if you plan on becomming a system administrator in the future.

Other suggest Python. I love Python! It was designed to be a programming
language, rather than an awk replacement. Many people have only good
things to say about Python. Search Google for "Dive Into Python" for a
good introduction.

If you are serious about becomming a programmer then you should learn
Lisp or Scheme. You'll never have any direct use of it, but the indirect
benefits are immense.

/M

-- 
Magnus Therning                    (OpenPGP: 0xAB4DFBA4)
magnus at therning.org
http://therning.org/magnus

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