Programing Languages

[ZeroOne]

Aren't Perl and HTML just scripting languages? I began with Qbasic since it comes (came) with every computer. It's very easy. Visual Basic is probably easiest for Windows. Robot Battle (www.robotbattle.com) also has got it's own programming(/scripting) language and it's also fun to play with it.

[cold_connection]

Personally, I'll go for C or Perl. C++ has quite a good deal of 'gizmos' while C is still used to make a kernel module and, most of all, is what Linux was programmed with. Perl is a powerful scripting language. It was created by a sysadmin who wanted to make daily tasks easier. It has some powerful features and is usually used in web-programming (using cgi) and for most scripts such as a port scanner or a log analyzer. If you are more web-oriented, take Perl. Else, get on with C.

[VicTT]

I learned ASM from a tutorial also...It didn't seem too hard!(with my father being an ASM programmer and all),I guess C isn't bad(it's widely used),but overall I prefer ASM

[Mankan]

I have to agree with you C guys. C and C++ gives the best understanding for programming fundamentals. Allthough it takes several years to get to know the ins and outs of C++, no matter what people tell you.

If you're on *ix I suggest you take a look at Perl and Java as well. If your on Windows, have a look at Visual Basic.NET or C#, both of which require the .NET runtime.

It sort of scares me that several of you say that the easiest programming language is HTML.

HTML is a markup language and *has absolutely nothing to do with programming*. It lacks every fundamental aspect of programming such as looping, conditional statements or even variables.
HTML is a set of SGML-compatible tags used to build webpages.

JavaScript and VBScript aren't programming languages either, though they come quite close. They are scripting languages and there is a huge difference. For example it is impossible to build stand-alone programs with them and they don't compile.

Cheers,

[garathjax]

For me the best language to start with is Pascal because it was primarily created to teach people the basics of programming so it introduces alot of important concepts used in other languages in a simple manner.

That said if you would prefer to learn a useful language (hardly nobody uses Pascal for serious programming) I would suggest C, as it too is relatively simple. A very readable tutorial for C can be found here .

I agree with the other users that said that you can't learn a language in 24 hours, 21 days etc. You could be programming your whole life in a language and still never master the language (can anybody out there really say they have mastered their native tongue? I certainally haven't mastered English) but you can get a good grasp of the basics in a month or two depending on how much time you spend at it.

[nabylbt]

i started off with a whole bunch of usefull/useless programming language : basic/ logo/vb
but at the univ i started on asm and that is the **** ... anyways it is defenitevely not the easiet to learn from.... need understanding of too many concepts first: binary algebra, moor's law, architecture of the cpu, sync/ async tx&rx system number ...

choosing a first lang depands on your end goal... programing just to know how go with c or c++...
or select something that's directly applyed in your field.

for me, i use to do a lot of dsp on microp, the first c program could not be run cause the buffer was too small and the compiller bad.... thus i went to hardcore asm. the worst also about asm it that it is different to each platform... and cpu architecture....
so if you want some asm help let me know i'll help you out ...