About programing, a general question

[sam tygier]

On 16/12/10 16:59, Parshwa Murdia wrote:
> hi,
>
> If one has to start from the scratch, from the zeroth level to do the programing, which programing language one should start with? In the ocean of the languages, to start with is really very typical. Can one justify it. Some say Python but again they say it is Perl which is better every time then the Python. Some say to start with C or C++ but again some emphasis to use Java or C#. Many say to go for .Net and VB or COBOL and some say to learn web based programing like HTML, PHP, ASP.Net. In this ocean who is just starting to learn which one he should prefer?
>
> Many say that what is the purpose of learning, then I say that to have the basic understanding of how exactly we can handle the machines like the CPU. Not to generate the big projects for the management processes, not even banking system but to know the basic of programing like how to handle the machines at the first, for that purpose, for the the scratch level purpose and for the one which is good even for Linux, what programing language should one like me, initiate?
>
> --
> Regards,
> Parshwa Murdia
>

A huge chunk of programming concepts are very similar in most languages: variables, loops, branching, etc. also most languages take ideas from earlier ones.
have look at  the languages you mentioned on
http://www.roesler-ac.de/wolfram/hello.htm
you will see lots of similar examples.

i learned all the basics on BBC BASIC at primary school. this helped when i came to learn more useful languages (javascript, perl, C, C++, python, PHP, fortran ...). just because i started with a language which encouraged GOTOs doesn't mean that i try to use them everywhere.

so my advice is start with an 'easy' language like python. there are lots of tutorials, and you don't need to get bogged down with awkward things (eg if you try to access an element beyond the end of an array in python you get an friendly error message, in C you may get a crash or corrupt memory and you'll need a debugger to find the problem). if you then feel you want something lower level you are in a good position to learn C or C++.

the alternative to to choose based on what you want toeg, PHP and javascript for web.

sam