Someone help me choose which to learn first, can't and lost
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Where would you recommend a beginner to start in programming? I do have a brief understanding of these languages but need help choosing which is the most skillful and practical in the real world to learn and put to use? I want to do something related solving, building, not just dealing with data. I want to see creations come to life. 1.Python 2.Php 3.HTML/CSS 4.Javaschript Which shall I choose?
[Scratch - Imagine, Program, Share](https://scratch.mit.edu/) Scratch uses "components" to program (versus "code"). It's the future. (See Unreal Game Engine and Lego Mindstorms EV3 for other examples of component / blueprint based programming).
"(I) am amazed to see myself here rather than there ... now rather than then". ― Blaise Pascal
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Where would you recommend a beginner to start in programming? I do have a brief understanding of these languages but need help choosing which is the most skillful and practical in the real world to learn and put to use? I want to do something related solving, building, not just dealing with data. I want to see creations come to life. 1.Python 2.Php 3.HTML/CSS 4.Javaschript Which shall I choose?
I think HTML and Javascript are your best bet, for a number of reasons: 1) You visually see changes on a website that you're building, as opposed to just printing "hello world" messages to a shell. 2) Your work is publicly available via the web (assuming you put it on a real website), so it's easy to ask for help/feedback from friends even if they're far away. 3) It's easy/cheap to get started. You can buy your own web domain for $20/year, and a basic hosted website for $6/month or so. 4) You only need a text editor like Notepad to start writing code; you don't need to worry about compiling it. 5) It gives you a good sense of how the web stuff works, how the browser talks to the server. 6) The skills are in high demand right now. I wouldn't get into any back-end languages like PHP or Python at this point. Learn how to manipulate the HTML using Javascript, and you'll learn a lot.
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Easy there.. that's decent learning. People stopped doing that a while ago. I don't think people have the patience for C++ anymore. At least not as a first language. I still remember trying to figure out pointers when I was 12. Good times. First time I ever yelled at a computer screen, a book, and cursed the gods.
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The reason I push for procedural at first is that the student needs to understand HOW the code does what it does. The single biggest problem I've seen with students who learn managed object-oriented languages first is they don't understand memory management. For a hobbiest, C# is probably the best way to go. For someone looking at a career, what C/C++ teaches you about how computers work is invaluable. It gives you a solid foundation to effectively move to more abstract languages. (Incidentally, several years ago, I had started to transition from C++ to C#, especially for one-off utilities. Then C++11 came out and resolved enough points of frustration that I went back to C++ save for one project. Except, toward the end of that one project, I encountered enough serious pain points with C# that I regretted not "porting it" to C++. This is not the first time, C# led me to the edge of a cliff and then said "adios.")
I meet a lot of newly educated C++ "experts" in my work. Most of them know very little about "HOW the code does what it does". They have no idea how a compiler operates, how optimization is done, how a stack is managed. They know about high level language constructs, not of the generated code. Unrolling the stack on an exception? No clue! Interrupt handler operation? No clue. OS service activation methods, with the necessary raising of privilege level etc? No clue. How OO is implemented - the class object, multiple inheritance, virtual methods, ...? No clue. They (think that they) know how it works at the object level, not at the code level. How is memory allocated for a dozen of threads in the same address space? How does the system clean up allocated resources when a thread, or a process terminates? (You do not free() the thread stack, or file control blocks, or I/O buffers!) I learned OO concepts by studying how the C++ compiler produced K&R C source code that could be compiled on any machine. Noone does that today. C and C++ programmers alike: Tthe know more of how the job market works than how a computer works at the instruction set / register / interrupt / MMS level. Or at the system level. I commented to one of the youngsters that the elevator in our office building doesn't run a propoer elevator algorithm; it may turn even if there are other users at higher/lower levels. Elevator algorithm - huh? Once I referred to excption propagation through the dynamic or static link - they had never heard about 'static link'- this was in a discussion of abandoned languages that do have a static link; that was completely new to them. And so on. Beliving that youngsters know memory management because you stress to them what comes up (of malloc) must come down (to free) doesn't teach them how memory is managed. They know of constructors and destructors, but not of the code behind those. And seriously: Programmers haven't had to understand compiler code generation and hardware addressing modes for a generation. Why should the average student have to know about buddy allocation an firstfit/bestfit and memory compaction, more than of different instruction set addressing methods? Students are relieved of understanding jump instructions by high level 'for' and 'while' loops and switch statements. There is no real reason why they should spend much more attention to memory management (until they become far more advanced). The only 'excuse' is that when programming in C++, you certainly should know it! In languages with a
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I meet a lot of newly educated C++ "experts" in my work. Most of them know very little about "HOW the code does what it does". They have no idea how a compiler operates, how optimization is done, how a stack is managed. They know about high level language constructs, not of the generated code. Unrolling the stack on an exception? No clue! Interrupt handler operation? No clue. OS service activation methods, with the necessary raising of privilege level etc? No clue. How OO is implemented - the class object, multiple inheritance, virtual methods, ...? No clue. They (think that they) know how it works at the object level, not at the code level. How is memory allocated for a dozen of threads in the same address space? How does the system clean up allocated resources when a thread, or a process terminates? (You do not free() the thread stack, or file control blocks, or I/O buffers!) I learned OO concepts by studying how the C++ compiler produced K&R C source code that could be compiled on any machine. Noone does that today. C and C++ programmers alike: Tthe know more of how the job market works than how a computer works at the instruction set / register / interrupt / MMS level. Or at the system level. I commented to one of the youngsters that the elevator in our office building doesn't run a propoer elevator algorithm; it may turn even if there are other users at higher/lower levels. Elevator algorithm - huh? Once I referred to excption propagation through the dynamic or static link - they had never heard about 'static link'- this was in a discussion of abandoned languages that do have a static link; that was completely new to them. And so on. Beliving that youngsters know memory management because you stress to them what comes up (of malloc) must come down (to free) doesn't teach them how memory is managed. They know of constructors and destructors, but not of the code behind those. And seriously: Programmers haven't had to understand compiler code generation and hardware addressing modes for a generation. Why should the average student have to know about buddy allocation an firstfit/bestfit and memory compaction, more than of different instruction set addressing methods? Students are relieved of understanding jump instructions by high level 'for' and 'while' loops and switch statements. There is no real reason why they should spend much more attention to memory management (until they become far more advanced). The only 'excuse' is that when programming in C++, you certainly should know it! In languages with a
Member 7989122 wrote:
I learned OO concepts by studying how the C++ compiler produced K&R C source code that could be compiled on any machine.
I learned C by looking at the assembly code produced by Turbo C. (On day 2 I realized that C is just a really nice macro-assembler!)
Member 7989122 wrote:
Fifteen years ago I gave up my confidence in assembler code for fine tuning,
About 20 years for me, when I was able to get a wave compressor to run within 10% of the speed of my assembly code. I've revisited assembly to write bootstrap code and to see what code is sometimes really doing, but otherwise I've only "used" it with some SSE intrinsics.
Member 7989122 wrote:
memory management is the responsibility of the runtime system
But at least you know the implications of large allocations (in .NET) and why not to do "stringval += something" in a loop!
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Where would you recommend a beginner to start in programming? I do have a brief understanding of these languages but need help choosing which is the most skillful and practical in the real world to learn and put to use? I want to do something related solving, building, not just dealing with data. I want to see creations come to life. 1.Python 2.Php 3.HTML/CSS 4.Javaschript Which shall I choose?
My two youngest took a class at Utah Valley University called "CS 1030 Foundations of Computer Science". It starts with the real basics--what is a hard disk, what is memory and so on. By about the halfway mark, they started rudimentary C# programming. I don't know your age, but my daughter took this class in high school through an extension program (where she could get both high school and college credit.) Check with your local university or community college to see if they have a similar course. They may also have an online version. Stanford has free online courses: (Stanford University • Free Online Courses and MOOCs | Class Central[^]). Anyone taken any of these? EDIT: This looks very similar to the class my kids took: Reviews for Computer Science 101 from Stanford OpenEdx | Class Central[^]
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But the thing is, ALL programming has pointers at the core, even if we pretend they are something different. (Of course, pointers in C can get very out-of-hand. If I see something like ***pointer[offset], my eyes glaze over.)
At that age, it was a brand new concept I couldn't relate to anything. When I understood the "how", I did still question the "why" for many years, up until the point where I learned about CPU-registers. At it's core, it's a conceptual necessity based on the way we build our chips. Even today I still think pointers are fundamentally pointless. Heh. ;P
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Wait, are you referring to cursing the gods? I'm not into religion really. I get the appeal, see the merit, but the custodians for each religion register as a threat to me. I only appeal to the gods because it's biologically wired into human nature, and I'm not so obtuse as to fight my own nature. It's stock-OS brain functionality. I'm not wasting any of that.
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KBZX5000 wrote:
and debug your code
Still surprised at how many developers don't know how to effectively debug code. During my career, I've run across more than one "experienced [in years] developer who didn't know how to run a debugger and so used a form of console output and/or logs.
That made me laugh. It's funny because it's true. Debugging and reading the damn errors you get are essential skills beginners often don't see. It does tick me off immensely when a developers ignores every error message / log and starts speculating on what went wrong instead. It usually end up with me yelling at them to: A) become literate B) investigate "what the words mean" C) do their damn job Pet peeves.
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Where would you recommend a beginner to start in programming? I do have a brief understanding of these languages but need help choosing which is the most skillful and practical in the real world to learn and put to use? I want to do something related solving, building, not just dealing with data. I want to see creations come to life. 1.Python 2.Php 3.HTML/CSS 4.Javaschript Which shall I choose?
What is your goal? Do you plan to make a career as a software developer? Are you just wanting to learn what programming is like? How much experience do you currently have, and what level of understanding do you have of how computers function? Many people on this forum are recommending C# (primarily because this is a Visual Studio/C# heavy forum). If you are just wanting to learn the basics of simple programming, learning C# to create simple programs is a little like using a sledgehammer to drive in a thumbtack. While I don't have much experience with Python, I understand it to be a nice interpretive language that will provide you with immediate feedback. The various facets of C#, and the added complication of a compiler make simple introduction daunting. On the other hand, before you would enter any plans for a profession, obviously, you would need to learn MUCH more than Python.
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Where would you recommend a beginner to start in programming? I do have a brief understanding of these languages but need help choosing which is the most skillful and practical in the real world to learn and put to use? I want to do something related solving, building, not just dealing with data. I want to see creations come to life. 1.Python 2.Php 3.HTML/CSS 4.Javaschript Which shall I choose?
The track you will choose will depend on your interest. If you prefer frontend brush up your skill in html/css then to JavaScript and later on you move it to Php. However, if you prefer data science, the go for python but try to know a lit bit of html.