New Prospective Programmer has Questions...

ALthough I did debate on putting this in the newbies section I took a risk and placed it here. Nevertheless, I hope that one or two of you may display your opinion on the following.

Programming - From a begginer's perspective, which language would be most suitable? Which language would be considered a modetate challenge? Which language is geared towards security and securing?

Education - What material is out there to get someone started? Is there a reputable source that has free information. Are these 'SAMS' books effiecient? IS there a free online course?

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Programming - From a begginer's perspective, which language would be most suitable?

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The name says it all: Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code. :D
But I found Perl real easy to start with and it's quite powerfull. Even for hardcore coders.

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Which language would be considered a modetate challenge?

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Anything (simple) Object Oriented, like perl (again ;) ) and java

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Which language is geared towards security and securing?

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All and none. It's not the language that makes a program secure. It's the programmer.
There are programming languages that take some of the work from the programmer and do stuff "automagicly", like memory management and variable declarations. These can help you but it can also bite you.

Well in my opinion C++ is good. but the best that i know is C# with MS Visual Studio.

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Programming - From a begginer's perspective, which language would be most suitable?

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You won't find much on basic. It started out as... (and still is) mostly an interpreted language for eight year olds. VB is good for kids and lazy-ass slobs like me who poop out half-assed VB applications at will.

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Which language would be considered a modetate challenge?

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You mean considering they are all the same old same old in theory, in practice, in concept, in principal, and yes often similiar in syntax? After you play around with JAVA, Pascal, Perl, C++... by the time you move to .net just because you heard it was cool and everyone else is moving to it... you'll suddenly notice that, "hey isn't all this stuff I've worked with in the past just like JAVA only with various changes and additions?".

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Which language is geared towards security

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What ever language does the best bounds checking and stuff, I suppose.

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and securing?

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Uhhh... hehehe. None that I can really think of at the moment... or go back to the third quote and re-read whatever lame comments I craped out below that quoted comment intil you do loop yourself into reading intil it means something or you have a seizure.

I'd recommend picking up perl as your first language. It is:
Simple to start learning, well documented, well supported, free, cross platform, and as much as a challenge as you want to make it. You can write an assortment of things with it, from web services and web applications to bots or automation (such as pushing windows com objects with it).

Later if you want to go into something fully compiled I'd recommend java or C#, C++ later if you're feeling spunky.

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Originally posted here by TheSpecialist
"hey isn't all this stuff I've worked with in the past just like JAVA"

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I'd say most things relate back to C/C++ syntax.

One thing and one thing only that you have to keep in mind is that programming is not all about writing code. Despite the thrill I get from getting down to it and the exhilaration I have when I manage [albeit rarely these days] to whip up an error-free program from the first compile, you have to remember that programming involves finding the shortest, most efficient and elegant solution to a problem. That translates into algorithms and hacking.

As for syntax, I myself started out with C++, went to C, a month of Perl [unfortunately just a month] and am currently studying Java. Though I'm waiting on some more C courses... I like the ability to write low-level stuff, something that Java doesn't really let you as much as C.

I try to steer clear of .NET [MS-only] stuff, and Java, cross-platform and all, is a good thing. C is generally well supported under both win and lin, but the lack [or rather, unnecessary difficulty] of GUI for apps makes it better for support applications.

But I wouldn't say Java is hard at all, so you could start out with that :) Get Java 1.5 and a book that teaches Java 1.5 and you'll be on your way in no-time!

For a beginner, I'd also go with perl. It gives you the ability to write both Procedural and Object Oriented code, and treat both as proper native code. For a beginner, this is pretty handy. It's also (as Juridian mentioned) very well documented and supported.

If you want to consider web languages (something nobody else seems to have touched on), your three primary choices are probably going to be ASP(with a .NET language like C# or VB), PHP, or JSP. PHP would seem the simplest least cost-inducing of the three, and I like it. PHP has incredible documentation and support, as well as being cross-platform.

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Originally posted here by hypronix
I try to steer clear of .NET [MS-only] stuff, and Java, cross-platform and all, is a good thing.

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C# can be run on non-MS boxes, and VB.NET support is coming along.

ALL of you excellent responses! I can't help but be amused at how each of you users has a particular preference and how everyones response correllate (or not) with one another.
I'd like to add another twist:

Hypthetically, say I'm a programmer student and I know a little bit about programming. What happens if I'd like a program to commit to a certain function that I know (in my mind) and can explain however don't know what the line of code is or where to put it in my program. What are my options? Do I come on to forums like these and expain my situation?

Ideally, as a student you would have a TA to teach you. But if you mean student as in the "I'm learning this, but on my own" then what you want to do is find a good forum or IRC channel that's populated by people that work with your same chosen programming language. They would point you to the relevant functions or techniques for your particular problem, however [hopefully] they won't give you any walkthroughs. What I see with a lot of novice coders is their desire to start doing big things when they know so very little. Take the time to write the apps in the book first, understand them and make slight modifications before you move on to writing your own full apps.

hypronix - Well said.

C++ beeotch! all the way. i started with it, and i will end with it (or a predecessor such as C#.)

also, .net is little more than some extra libraries and garbage like that...not needed, but can be nice...such as winsocks2.

i can remember dabbling in BASIC waaay back when...same with HTML, but those just got me interested. C++ is easy to pick up on for beginners, and is probably the most widely documented language available.

http://www.cplusplus.com/
http://www.cppreference.com/
http://www.cprogramming.com/

For a compiler on win32 systems:
http://www.bloodshed.net/devcpp.html

Also, the SAM'S books are very very nice. sometimes they go out of order, but you should never rely on only one source anyways. the "C++ For Dummies" is also not bad. "C++ From The Ground Up" is the one I used most.


A_T

P.S. - as an added tidbit, seeing as how Google allows boolean operators in it's search engine (such as the + symbol for AND)...make sure the phrase "C++" IS IN QUOTES for the best results, then you can add any other info afterwards.
So, once again, I say "C++ beeotch!".

Awesom. Thanks for the encouraagment.

HTML is a formatting language not a programming language. C# is not a predecessor of C++, C++ is a superset of C that came after C, C# is a C syntax language for developing with the .net framework....

.Net is more than just extra libraries, it is a development platform. You can do managed C++, VB.net, J#.net, C#, and a dozen other languages using the .net libraries or you can just code straight up IL. It has a good base of objects ready to use (the framework class library), the ability to work with older COM based .dll's, and allows you to make web services, event driven web applications, windows services, and standard applications extremely quickly.

C++ is fine as a beginner language, the learning curve is a bit higher to do anything really useful. I'd recommend picking up the stroustrup book 'c++ programming language'.

Being old school I'll tell you that if you take a good computer logic course you can't go wrong - learning the basics of how all programs work is the key - with that key you can program any language, with just a few syntax changes. Learn flowcharting and pseudocoding first.