What programming language?
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I am wanting to learn how to program computers, and would like to know which language is best? I was thinking of Visual Basic because the simple code would be easier to write well and understand, but i understand it is not as fast as C++. J# and C++ CLI are out of the question because they are worthless from what i have read. Do you think i should get c# or VB?
When I went to university, I struggled to really grasp the programming language they taught there (which was Java). After working as a web developer for the last couple of years, I've found that the 'easier' programming of web languages, such as PHP or ASP, have seriously helped my skills in programming C# .NET. I would recommend making an hour or two per day with a good tutorial book and some Java (coffee) that will guide you through setting up a dynamic website (can be set up on your own PC if you have XP Pro) in ASP/SQL, if you wish to go down the avenue of Microsoft languages. You can also use the W3C schools to supplement any quick-fire "how to" things that you need answering. I do remember a report on here a month back stating that most available jobs were in C# by an absolute mile!
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I am wanting to learn how to program computers, and would like to know which language is best? I was thinking of Visual Basic because the simple code would be easier to write well and understand, but i understand it is not as fast as C++. J# and C++ CLI are out of the question because they are worthless from what i have read. Do you think i should get c# or VB?
Your choice of language is not really the thing that will make the most difference to how good you turn out to be as a programmer. What will make a difference is learning the concepts behind the code; the underlying reasons for why code is written the way it is. You can do this two ways, either you wade straight in and start programming without really knowing what you're doing, in which case you'll learn these concepts the "hard" way, by making mistakes and fixing them, and learning better ways to approach things, or you can specifically learn about algorithms, data structures, program design and all the other stuff first and then apply this knowledge to your code. As far as languages go, if what you're looking for is something you can get paid to do, I'd (fairly reluctantly) say go for something under the .NET umbrella. Personally I prefer C# to VB, but I'm used to the stylings of older languages which C# apes to a degree. If you really want to understand what the computer is doing, take a look at C. It's probably the closest you'll get without going the whole hog and hand-coding assembler. I didn't like java (and I still don't), but I haven't got any rational justification for this, it just didn't feel right. I got on ok with Pascal, and that's another decent choice for a first language, even if it is a bit old and kind of useless in practice (I don't know of many places that are actively looking for pascal coders, but you could always shift into Delphi, which is at least slightly more attractive). There are also a lot of "scripting" languages out there (and significantly more in the open source community). These are very handy for little jobs where writing something in a lower level language would be a lot of pain for very little gain. For rapid app development I personally can't fault Tcl/Tk. The standard distribution is a little less friendly than it could be, but Tclkit from equi4.com is a distribution that allows you to wrap your code into a complete executable extremely painlessly. In short, there are loads of options out there and loads of ways of approaching the job of learning programming. I'd be tempted to suggest you learn why things are the way they are first, dabble with a bit of theory, and then pick something up and try writing some code with it. It'll confuse you a lot less if you know what some terms mean beforehand.
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I am wanting to learn how to program computers, and would like to know which language is best? I was thinking of Visual Basic because the simple code would be easier to write well and understand, but i understand it is not as fast as C++. J# and C++ CLI are out of the question because they are worthless from what i have read. Do you think i should get c# or VB?
HI, as u have wriiten that u are just want to start coding of programs.i think u shud start with simple " c ", it has various advantages, firstly u will know how the coding is being done , Secondly u will understand how ur editor works + various basic concepts of programming/coding like loops, decision making, error handling, pointers etc. so once u've leant these basic concepts u will understand the working or sementics & syntax of any other language very fastly. I hope this will help :) bye. this is gaurav.