Subj : GETSTR
To : Willowolf
From : Amcleod
Date : Sat Jan 19 2002 10:09 pm
RE: GETSTR
BY: Willowolf to Amcleod on Sat Jan 19 2002 07:24 am
> What woud be a good "first" language to learn? I have been told that C
> is the way to go. Maybe Perl is the better way to go for today's needs?
You realise you have just pressed the "Detonate" button on the ticking
bomb of the oldest thread on the internet?
If you have a specific job to do, then that will dictate. example, if you
want to learn programming SOLELY to make additions/modifications to
Synchronet modules, then start with JS or BAJA (JS preferably, because
while not a complete replacement for BAJA *yet* it is probably the
direction SBBS scripting will go moreso than venerable BAJA. Also it has
wider scope -- NON-Synchronet use).
Otherwise, if just learning for academic reasons, don't start by learning
anything too esoteric. And don't use anything too crippled. C, Pascal,
Java would be fairly good introductory languages. Ignore syntactically
dated and outmoded languages like BASIC, FORTRAN, COBOL <shudder>. If you
can program in a "good" language you can dumb-down to use BASIC, FORTRAN
etc, if the need arises. If you are only schooled in VB, then you will be
driven insane by Perl.
Speaking of Perl, it is a FINE language for many tasks, but I don't know
if it is a good place to start -- it can be extremely cryptic which may
give the rank beginner a problem. I hesitate to mention Python because it
goes against 40 years of programing experience and makes "whitespace"
syntactically significant and the idea is abhorrent to me. I am all in
favour of innovation, but this idea sucks dust.
Many languages will cost you something to acquire. Perl is free
(ActiveState for the Windows people) Python probably the same. There are
free versions of compilers for C and Pascal out there.
My biggest tip to the novice programmer is: get yourself a decent
text-editor (
http://www.utopia-planitia.de/indexus.html) and learn to use
it.
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