Basics of programming?

[Drakain Zeil]

Good starting languages:

Python (basicly on every OS)
QBasic (windows only, QB ships somewhere on windows 98 and older CDs).

[Fushiryo]

If you'd like to be a network admin on a linux system (and maybe do a little bit of hacking once you know how to exploit the system), then Perl is your language. As it isn't really cross-platform (confined to the *nix realm, and possibly some Unix-based Mac OS's), and because of it's lax rules in defining types (a string is an integer is a something else, etc.) I wouldn't recommend it as your first language. It'd be like students learning ebonics before proper english, but that's a debate for social scientists.


C++ is awesome! Want to code software for business? C++ can do that. Want to design video games? C++ can do that. Want to make hardware drivers? You get the idea... I seem to have let my enthusiasm overrun.

My suggestion? Learn C++, move on to MS C# (unless you really want to code your own GUI classes), and from there, maybe some assembly or Cobol, though the latter seems to be on the way out.

[Juridian]

Erm, perl runs on windows via the activestate perl engine. You can use it for wsh, asp, com automation, etc.

Choose your language based on what interests you. If you want to do regular business apps, video games, etc. then go with C, C++, or C#. You can do some java work here but it's not as common.

If you want to do server side web apps then I'd recommend VB, C#, Java or Perl.

If you just want to learn a scripting language to manage day to day tasks then python (on linux and windows), perl (on linux and windows), or if you want something windows specific and stupidly easy then vbscript for wsh.

If you think you are ever going to do any kind of enterprise development (say n-tier business apps or the next mmog) then I'd recommend learning all you can about network programming, database programming, multithreaded programming, and all the architecture and design you can.

If you have any questions feel free to hit me up.