Whats the best language to learn for a beginer?

[cottonvibes]

hah this jonathaner is a clever spambot; that post almost looked legit xD

reported the spambot.

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Eccentricity is often associated with genius, giftedness, or creativity. The individual's eccentric behavior is perceived to be the outward expression of his or her unique intelligence or creative impulse. In this vein, the eccentric's habits are incomprehensible not because they are illogical or the result of madness, but because they stem from a mind so original that it cannot be conformed to societal norms.

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[@ruantec]

this thread is older than my grandma cotton why revived?

Spoiler:

something inside me tells me the answer

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[cottonvibes]

i didn't revive it, it was revived by a spambot who was just banned and his posts deleted...

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Eccentricity is often associated with genius, giftedness, or creativity. The individual's eccentric behavior is perceived to be the outward expression of his or her unique intelligence or creative impulse. In this vein, the eccentric's habits are incomprehensible not because they are illogical or the result of madness, but because they stem from a mind so original that it cannot be conformed to societal norms.

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[@ruantec]

Originally Posted by cottonvibes

i didn't revive it, it was revived by a spambot who was just banned and his posts deleted...

i was just kidding

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[Squall-Leonhart]

English.

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[zidine00]

ha, its good to see my thread alive again, ITS ALIVE!

Anyway, given its revival, id like to recomend java to myself.

(and to anyone else trying out for the first time.)

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[Proto]

English.

Given the absurd phonetical complexity English has I'd actually recommend against it. Actually Esperanto is recognized to be the easiest language to learn out there, because of the advantage it has that it's a constructed language whose grammar was designed to be easy and straightforward, unlike natural languages which just evolved randomly through the ages.

In any case, I've sticken to my Python choice for a while, and I still do. If I were the introduction to programming teacher for a cs course I'd choice Python as one of the easiest language to pick up. For a high school or junior high course I may consider vb6 or pascal instead.

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[@ruantec]

after coding with many different languages all those years... it is hard to say what´s the best language... i think the best one is the one that fits the needs of the project you´re about to write using that language. few years ago i would say "The mighty C"... in the past we had no other choice than learn the hard way as it was the only available way we had to learn things... now days we have other tools and therefore things are now easy for beginners that wants to learn a language.

C++ is great but due to the overrated C syntax and logic its very hard to comprehend and a lot of beginners struggles to even create a simple app with it not to mention the creation of a GUI that even for experts is a pain in the ass sometimes. therefore my choice goes to C# a new language that during my tests and coding in the past 2 years has showed me that most of the negative comments found on the internet are nothing but bullsh**. why do i say that??? most common comments about .Net and C# are the words "Bloated", "High memory usage" and "High Resource consumption" as i showed in this thread that´s nothing but lies because i want to see a C or C++ app that loads the stuff i loaded there and also the same eye-candy and still keep the CPU usage at 0 and the memory use under the 2MB.... last but not least all the stuff showed there was coded using .Net and pure C# code.

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Last edited by @ruantec; 2 Weeks Ago at 09:51..

[Proto]

Hmm... you are mixing two questions there about one being the best language and the other being the best language for beginners in your reasoning there you know.

Either way, I don't think your application profiling makes for a fair benchmark for execution comparison and memory usage, given that many of the libraries the .NET framework depends upon are preloaded into the system, so its like getting an unfair advantage anyway. Have you tried analyzing your app with a more in detail profiling application anyway? Maybe those numbers would be more significant than just putting two unrelated applications along a not so-in-depth analysis through the resource manager.

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Last edited by Proto; 2 Weeks Ago at 10:27..

[@ruantec]

Originally Posted by Proto

Hmm... you are mixing two questions there about one being the best language and the other being the best language for beginners in your reasoning there you know.

Either way, I don't think your application profiling makes for a fair benchmark for execution comparison and memory usage, given that many of the libraries the .NET framework depends upon are preloaded into the system, so its like getting an unfair advantage anyway. Have you tried analyzing your app with a more in detail profiling application anyway? Maybe those numbers would be more significant than just putting two unrelated applications along a not so-in-depth analysis through the resource manager.

am by no means mixing questions... why??? quite simple. "There´s no Best language" but there are "Better" coders. in my opinion all the languages have positive and negative sides and it depends on the task. what i do recommend is what i think is best judging by my own experiences.. of course my recommendation is based on my point of view and it may be different for others but am just putting my two cents in this thread in order to help beginners.... i´ve worked with few beginners here at work that started to work with us and didn´t had a single knowlege of C/C++ and after learning C# it was so damn simple for those guys to work with other C syntax languages such as C++, Java, php, Javascript and even C itself.

as for analyzing my app with a more detail application... i use several tools to track memory and resource usage so i can see what´s using a higher memory usage or resource and so i can investigate why its happening.. because of that i´ve been able to optimize the code as much as possible and get the results showed on that thread.

about comparation of two unrelated applications... to answer your comment there i want to mention that i can´t compare my app with other apps that probrably does the same tasks.. why??? should i compare @ES against Windows Media player without effects??? as you will see it is absurd to compare them because there´s no way they could get that low so there´s no point there. the reason why i took the notepad was to see how far i could get and also have some fun.. anyways here´s a comparation pic for you(i turned off visual effects on WMP to reduce the memory usage of it):



or should i compare it against foobar2K???


.... it doesn´t make sense to me therefore i thought the notepad would be a great rival in order to show others(interested in .Net) how far you could get coding in C# for example.

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Last edited by @ruantec; 2 Weeks Ago at 11:22..

[Proto]

about comparation of two unrelated applications... to answer your comment there i want to mention that i can´t compare my app with other apps that probrably does the same tasks.. why??? should i compare @ES against Windows Media player without effects??? as you will see it is absurd to compare them because there´s no way they could get that low so there´s no point there. the reason why i took the notepad was to see how far i could get and also have some fun.. anyways here´s a comparation pic for you(i turned off visual effects on WMP to reduce the memory usage of it):

I was not referring to comparison of the whole app since I know there is no direct equivalent, but rather comparison of individual application functions which may serve as a better frame of reference... but still my main point still prevails about such a comparison not being that significant or really authoritative enough to warrant saying this or that about C#. How about running the application on a Windows installation that doesn't preload the .NET framework? Running it under virtualization software? How does that affects performance? How about comparing the usage of the Aero API and its performance in your application to other Aero benchmarking reference? etc. I'm not saying that you have to go and do all of that, however if you want non-layman people to take you seriously with the memory comparisons you will have to bring something more solid into the table.

am by no means mixing questions... why??? quite simple. "There´s no Best language" but there are "Better" coders. in my opinion all the languages have positive and negative sides and it depends on the task. what i do recommend is what i think is best judging by my own experiences.. of course my recommendation is based on my point of view and it may be different for others but am just putting my two cents in this thread in order to help beginners because i´ve deal with few even here at work that started to work with us and didn´t had a single knowlege of C/C++ and after learning C# it was so damn simple for those guys to work with other C syntax languages such as C++, Java, php, Javascript and even C itself.

i'm pretty sure that there is a language for anything, but trying to teach a beginner the beauties of Lisp or Scheme is just plain torture, which was my main point when I was saying that you were mixing the arguments for two different questions.

Then again, from the way I've noticed that we two give answers to this particular topic when reading past threads, you always seem to answer from the POV of a self learner who is searching for online tutorials or who has a particular application in mind, while I do from the POV of an instructor which has to impart an standardized curriculum to a class, or to a person to which programming is a tool and to whom it's more important to understand the principles behind algorithm development. Different perspectives I guess.

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Last edited by Proto; 2 Weeks Ago at 11:31..

[@ruantec]

ok i definitelly got your point now.. and i agree that the .net requirement shouldn´t be there.. anyways what i wanted to show is what can be done and not the .net requirement. as i said people see it as bloated, resource and memory consume monster when in reality isn´t the case at all.. that was my point.

to answer your other comments.. am not a self learner that search for online tutorials in fact i hate to read more than a page of a book . i studied those languages in the past 15 years. some i payed myself some where payed by the goverment and some where payed by the companies i worked/work for. atm i´ve teached several beginners in different companies here and also helped other advanced coders in order to comprehend some of the stuff we worked... so all i talk here is about my experiences that as i already said it could be different in other peoples views and i respect that. but still i think am competitive enough to recommend a language i think its best for others.

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Last edited by @ruantec; 2 Weeks Ago at 11:38..

[Proto]

Sorry, I didn't explain myself, I didn't meant that you were a self learner (just as I didn't mean I was an instructor, at best I've only been a TA for some programming classes. ), but rather that your recommendations seemed to be oriented towards such people. Or at least I can't imagine myself teaching any .NET language (or Java, C++ or any heavy OO language) to a class full of programming beginners.

Then again that may just be me. I mean, as much of a Linux lover I am I cannot deny in any sense that the .NET family is one of the most useful set of languages one can learn nowadays, but I'd only recommend people to pick up those languages once they have a firm knowledge of what they are doing. Unless you already have a specific application in mind, and you are learning the language as a tool to solve certain problem, rather than for the sake of learning programming principles.

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[nonoitall]

Originally Posted by zidine00

Anyway, given its revival, id like to recomend java to myself.

(and to anyone else trying out for the first time.)

Same here. That was the first real programming language I learned. I'm kinda surprised at the suggestions of learning VB first and then moving on to Java/C#/C/C++. I'd think it would be easier to start out with more C-like syntax if the eventual goal is to work in C/C++, but maybe that's just me.

[Proto]

Well, we just have to remember what the hellow world in java looks like (actually, this hold true to C++,C# and many so called newbie friendly languages)

class HelloWorldApp {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        System.out.println("Hello World!"); // Display the string.
    }
}

It may seem like very simple to you now, but just how many concepts are you juggling there? Public classes, static functions, array parameters, static members, strings.

Now compare it to the basic equivalent

cls
print "Hello world"
end

or the equivalent in python

print "Hello, World!"

Heck, even in Pascal

program HelloWorld;

begin
  writeln('Hello World');
end.

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[@ruantec]

You showed a great example there Proto and C# isn´t any different from Java at that.. while your post clearly shows less need of code still it doesn´t show the positive sides of it.. C# for instance use classes.. in fact everything is a class and there are several ways you could do some nice stuff and don´t even need to write that much. also you have to take in mind that tools write a lot of stuff for you and the C# intellisense in VS2008 is just a beauty..

Originally Posted by Proto

Sorry, I didn't explain myself, I didn't meant that you were a self learner (just as I didn't mean I was an instructor, at best I've only been a TA for some programming classes. ), but rather that your recommendations seemed to be oriented towards such people. Or at least I can't imagine myself teaching any .NET language (or Java, C++ or any heavy OO language) to a class full of programming beginners.

Then again that may just be me. I mean, as much of a Linux lover I am I cannot deny in any sense that the .NET family is one of the most useful set of languages one can learn nowadays, but I'd only recommend people to pick up those languages once they have a firm knowledge of what they are doing. Unless you already have a specific application in mind, and you are learning the language as a tool to solve certain problem, rather than for the sake of learning programming principles.

don´t worry mate because i didn´t explained my point that well too... as you know my english is pretty bad but i´ll try to explain my point as good as i can ok?

to my eyes people are confused nowdays.. they think that OO is just to high to learn and you have to learn the low level too in order to be able to call yourself a "Good" coder. while its true that you should learn the low-level stuff and how things are really done still people are blind.. for example if you create a C application and want a Windows GUI for example what you do is nothing more than use windows controls and done but....... you forget that those controls weren´t made by you so you have 0 idea how they did that and therefore you´re still at the same point.

learn from point 0 would mean start from 0 and code a application from 0 is not the best way. OO even being a high level they still show a lot of stuff and the logic of how to do things comes from you and not the language as you´re the one that choose how to do things or which way to go. .net still offers posibilities to view the assemblies and check how things are done so you could easily do it yourself too.

now about framework.. people hate framework and all the stuff but they forget one single point and therefore i always say they are blind... a lot of tools such as WxWidgets or any other tools offer a sort of "Framework" as they have pre-made stuff for you to make your life easier so its not that the framework idea is new at all. to make a better example i will compare DirectShow and VLC.

as you may know VLC is being praised because it doesn´t require any other components to play files while DirectShow apps require you to download codecs in order to play files but what´s really behind????

a common DirectShow app is mostly < than 3 MB and most codec packs are between 5-15mb now what´s the difference??? even if VLC doesn´t require the download of those codecs you still have to download the libraries that comes with it in the 17+MB download package at least once or else even VLC won´t be able to play files...

in conclution codecs, libraries etc. make no difference to me in some aspects as you still have to download them.. the only difference is what people make you believe that is.

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Last edited by @ruantec; 2 Weeks Ago at 13:06..

[Proto]

also you have to take in mind that tools write a lot of stuff for you and the C# intellisense in VS2008 is just a beauty..

Yeah but intellisense and the beauties of an IDE are for intermediate to experienced programmers who are looking for shortcutes, not for people who are learning the rudiments of programming. For those people you don't even let them use an IDE you tell them to program in Notepad so that they are forced to write everything down for easier memorization).

to my eyes people are confused nowdays.. they think that OO is just to high to learn and you have to learn the low level too in order to be able to call yourself a "Good" coder. while its true that you should learn the low-level stuff and how things are really done still people are blind.. for example if you create a C application and want a Windows GUI for example what you do is nothing more than use windows controls and done but....... you forget that those controls weren´t made by you so you have 0 idea how they did that and therefore you´re still at the same point.

Uh... yeah, totally agreed, any program any decent size will end up using an external library in some form. However that's not the kind of programs you assign beginners to do. You let them learn how to use data structures, the nature of loops, to understand how algorithmic flow works, calling functions, and other very basic functions. Heck, if you are adamant to introduing them to the concepts of OO from the get go then I stand by my python recommendation. Not only it has much simpler syntax. Because of its nature as an interpreter its much easier for an student to interact with the code an see how their functions responds to different commands.

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[@ruantec]

while i agree with you there again Proto i still think that let beginners use the notepad just to memorize what they have to write its an exageration... i mean i learned the hard way but that doesn´t mean i have to teach others that way because times has changed.. also because they learn how to code using the notepad doesn´t make them better coders to my eyes and last but not least that practice is totally wrong if they wish to work as coders at a later time... why is that??? i´ve worked for several companies as a coder already and one thing never changed.... when you get a job todo today it should be done "Yesterday" so to say. and that´s a fact so you don´t have time to waste on such things.

you haven´t worked as a coder yourself don´t you???? otherwise you would know that for sure.

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Last edited by @ruantec; 2 Weeks Ago at 20:18..

[Proto]

I have been working in the academy as a research associate in computational biology for a year now, so every experiment I do requires coding (I'm actually working with NVIDIA CUDA, and GPGPU oriented programming). If you mean that I haven't worked in the industry, no, I haven't, however that doesn't mean I do any less coding or that we don't need to handle our own set of deadlines and requirements.

I didn't mean that using Notepad makes them better programmers, I only meant to use it for memorization purposes. Constantly writing down things does help you memorize better, not only in programming, but in any area you want to study. It doesn't really have to be notepad you know. You an go ahead and use any IDE whih doesn't do the work for you when you are still learning, so Visual Studio and Eclipse are excluded. I would use something more in the lines of Dev-c++ instead). I don't want people to become dependent on any single IDE before they are familiar with the most rudimentary programming principles.

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[@ruantec]

Got it... anyways you have a lot more pressure when you work for a company and you have short deadlines.. anyways memorization is for sure not a bad thing but to my eyes its just a practice... eitherway i respect your point of you but still i have mines and i do not think that memorizing everything makes any differences when it comes to help a beginner... in fact i think it could confuse even more the poor guy/girl.

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