The Great War.

[techb]

I know all of you have something to say about coding. More specifically on what languages to either learn first or at all. This thread is for that.

Things to state:

1) What language do you recommend first to a new timer and why?

2) Why is it any diff than "x" language?

3) Have you coded in anything other than said language or "types" of said language?

4) Are you as fluent in the other languages as you are in the one from question 1?

5) Real world examples of why and how and reasons "x" is better than "y", || you said "x" over "y".

[vezzy]

Everyone's going to say Python, because they don't really know much else.

But the truth is there is no optimal answer to a person's first language. It could pretty much be anything, quite frankly. C, Ruby, Lisp, Haskell, OCaml, Erlang... since it's your first, it won't be shocking, as you have no prior expectations and experience.

In fact, I would say that a beginner should learn a non-ALGOL language first, like Haskell, Lisp or ML. Because this will desensitize them to non-procedural paradigms right from the start, and they won't be yelling "OH GOD LISP MAKES NO SENSE OMG STUPID PARENTHESES THIS SYNTAX IS SO WEEEEIRD LOL" like a bunch of buffoons when they step outside of their comfort zone. Some hackers those people are.

Afterwards, go with C and then progress to a higher-level imperative language.

But, I'm going to take a stab here and say learn Ruby. It'll teach you ALGOL constructs, but it also has lots of elements from Smalltalk and Lisp, so it won't leave you entirely in a black hole.

[hppd]

I would say go with Java, it is better then most languages because it gets you going with the default concepts about programming and OOP . Also anpther benefit of Java is that it can be run on multiple electronic devices, mobile phones, radios etc. What I also like about it is the run once, compile everywhere thing. And employers like the language too because it's an industrial language (so I've heard). A downside about Java is that you don't have a lot of control over the system (it runs in a sandbox)

I myself started out with Vb.NET, in school we learn it to teach us the basics of programming. I don't reccomend it because it teaches you wrong ways and  makes you lazy. But you get fast results and the graphical interface is nice too.

I also reccomend to learn Python, it isn't really  a programming (scripting language) language but it is very powerfull and strong. It's good for when you need quick and dirty code. It sucks for makeing programs that non savy computer user need to use though.

[Zesh]

I myself started out with Vb.NET, in school we learn it to teach us the basics of programming. I don't reccomend it because it teaches you wrong ways and  makes you lazy. But you get fast results and the graphical interface is nice too.

Wrong. You taught yourself or your teachers taught you wrong. A language can't teach you what's right and what's wrong.

[Matriplex]

Lua is a great beginner language in my opinion. For one, it's extraordinarily simple. It's also been proved to be the fastest scripting language out there as well as being super small.

 Lua is pretty much completely cross platform as long as you have an ansi c compiler which pretty much everyone has anyways. I use it for game development because of it's speed, for levels and heavy AI arithmetic. I mean it's just so easy to embed it in any popular programming language you can think of (Java, C++, C, C#). It's also used in the awesome wm.

Yes, I have programmed in many other languages out and I'm most fluent in Java.