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ctult
December 2nd, 2009, 01:58 AM
I am teaching a programming class. What is the simplest programming language to learn and use?

Rytron
December 2nd, 2009, 01:59 AM
HTML (although perhaps not strictly a programming language).

You could consider python. Try this to make the code:


sudo apt-get install idle

ctult
December 2nd, 2009, 02:00 AM
No, I can not use html, or else I would.

EDIT: Python I am considering.

Land Rover Series 3
December 2nd, 2009, 02:01 AM
Beginners All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code (BASIC)

Iowan
December 2nd, 2009, 02:02 AM
Basic used to be the starting language (I started with Fortran in college).

switch10
December 2nd, 2009, 02:10 AM
Hi,
there is a program out there called "scratch". windows and mac only right now, but it runs great in wine. it was developed by some computer scientists at MIT. It is awesome for learning the basics. Basically you drag and drop variables and such into an area and make a sprite move, talk or whatever. here is the website: www.scratch.mit.edu I would recommend downloading a few of the examples just to see how it works.

I'm currently learning C right now, and this program helped me so much.

Hope that helps

Dave

ctult
December 2nd, 2009, 02:11 AM
Hi,
there is a program out there called "scratch". windows and mac only right now, but it runs great in wine. it was developed by some computer scientists at MIT. It is awesome for learning the basics. Basically you drag and drop variables and such into an area and make a sprite move, talk or whatever. here is the website: www.scratch.mit.edu (http://www.scratch.mit.edu) I would recommend downloading a few of the examples just to see how it works.

I'm currently learning C right now, and this program helped me so much.

Hope that helps

Dave


I am using scratch at the beginning of the year

ctult
December 2nd, 2009, 02:19 AM
I would like a language like scratch.

3rdalbum
December 2nd, 2009, 02:19 AM
Forget BASIC.

Use Python. It's an excellent language - very flexible, very quick to write and debug, and it's used extensively throughout Ubuntu.

Land Rover Series 3
December 2nd, 2009, 02:25 AM
I think that to get more focussed answers you'll need to expand a bit on what level of class you're teaching. Is it 10-year olds who have a vague understanding of using Google, or post-graduates with a deep knowledge of binary mathematics?

Hmmmm, if you're going to be actually teaching a programming class, what programming languages do you already know?

Machine code is easy to use - all you need is a keyboard with a '0' and a '1' key, but it's a beast to learn. I always enjoyed programming in assembly language, but again, once you get over the initial simplicity, you begin to appreciate how much you really don't know.

Still reckon Basic's the best all-rounder for an introduction to programming, but pending further information it's hard to advise.

pbrane
December 2nd, 2009, 02:27 AM
I would think that the best language to use for your class would depend on what you are trying to teach. Python is an excellent high level language, but C is probably the most used language. I personally think C is a great language to learn, as it consists only of it's operators. Even the C Standard Library itself is written in C. Having said that, pointers can be tricky to learn, but quite powerful once mastered.

If you are teaching basic programming constructs then probably Python would be a good choice. And I agree with 3rdalbum, forget BASIC.

Some Penguin
December 2nd, 2009, 02:36 AM
It'll definitely depend upon the audience. People with a decent background in mathematics and abstraction will probably have a better time with anything involving such things as abstract data types and recursion, however.

I'll note that Pascal, while a bit archaic, was at least partly intended with instruction in mind; and it's sufficiently similar to many main-line languages that what it does teach about structured, imperative programming will not be worthless. This is contrast to odder languages like Logo (which is simple, but not particularly useful for transferable knowledge) or Prolog.

ctult
December 5th, 2009, 08:33 PM
I think I will do Python

Zoot7
December 5th, 2009, 09:42 PM
C is a great one to start off with since it's sort of like the "Latin of Programming Languages".
I myself started off with C, but then went on to VHDL and C++ relatively quickly.

Xbehave
December 5th, 2009, 09:56 PM
I'm a noob and i know Python, it's easier than bash, java & c and more useful than BASIC or fortran. Alternatively microsoft's tools make it easy to do a GUI in VB which can be usefull if you go on to use VBA.

Ipython is a much better interative interpreter than the standard cpython one, i can't recomend any IDEs because kwrite fills my needs for basic scripting.

kevin01123
December 5th, 2009, 10:01 PM
Python or Scheme.

Greg
December 5th, 2009, 10:03 PM
What are you going to be teaching?

Warpnow
December 6th, 2009, 12:37 AM
basic for GUI apps.

Python for CLI apps.

There is REALBasic, which works in linux.

PhoHammer
December 6th, 2009, 12:49 AM
basic for GUI apps.

Python for CLI apps.

There is REALBasic, which works in linux.

Do you know of anything like REALBasic, but free?

ve4cib
December 6th, 2009, 12:57 AM
Python is definitely a pretty easy one to learn, and given its similarity to C/++/#, Java, etc... it would be useful for anyone moving on to other programming later on.

Java is what a lot of universities seem to be using for introductory computer science classes these days. It's much, much easier for beginners than C or C++ (thanks to its automatic garbage-collection, and behind-the-scenes pointer-handling), and being cross-platform and free your students can install it on whatever they use (Mac, Windows, Linux, Solaris, etc...). Given that it's used in universities a lot you'll be able to find lots of good teaching resources for it. For example, my old university has an online Wiki-style textbook used for first-year CS that was written entirely by third-year students. The textbook can be found HERE (https://webmail.cs.umanitoba.ca/mediawiki/index.php/COMP1010)

Javascript would be another interesting one to use for teaching. It fits in nicely with HTML (something you already said you would use if you could), and Javascript arguably has more real-world applications than Python. You can treat Javascript as a straight-forward C-style language to get the basics of syntax and structure down, and later on you can throw in all of the Lisp-style functional aspects like closures and lambdas. It's also very, very easy to find sample Javascript code out there to use as examples.

Finally, as a complete curve-ball there's something like Lisp. Yes, most programmers will tell you it's crazy and weird. But most programmers probably learned something like C or Java first and had to reverse-engineer their thinking to deal with fully-functional programming. Lisp's structure is exceptionally simple: there's only one kind of data structure, and it's always executed in a uniform, recursive way.

mmix
December 6th, 2009, 02:14 AM
Etoys is . . .

* an educational tool for teaching children powerful ideas in compelling ways
* a media-rich authoring environment and visual programming system
* a free software program that works on almost all personal computers

http://www.squeakland.org/

Krupski
December 6th, 2009, 04:32 AM
Beginners All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code (BASIC)

10 FOR X = 1 TO 100
20 PRINT "I will not talk in class"
30 NEXT X


All done! :)

Puzzled Guy
December 6th, 2009, 05:03 AM
Maybe try Practical Extraction And Report Language (PERL)

You can get perl (if you don't have it already) from the updates manager or synaptic

For more info look here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perl)

lisati
December 6th, 2009, 05:07 AM
At school I learned some BASIC, but the sort which required line numbers. A newer dialect (e.g. FreeBasic, which comes in versions for Windows & Linux) might be better.
In my first year at university, I did Fortran. By the time I got to my second year, they'd made a decision to teach Pascal to first-year students.

openuniverse
December 6th, 2009, 07:28 AM
.

nvteighen
December 6th, 2009, 12:29 PM
Easiest... according to what?


Learning curve: Python, Scheme
Amount of stuff to learn: C (aprox. 10 constructs)
Syntax and clarity: Scheme
String processing: Perl
Portability: Java
OOP: Python or Objective-C (I still have to decide).
Magic: Common Lisp
Esoteric stack-based programming: Forth


There's no easiest programming language. There's the easiest programming language for something. For beginners, I believe Python is the best choice.

grayrainbow
December 6th, 2009, 01:08 PM
http://langpop.com/ choose yourself.
Or if you want something more...hmm...basic - everything that involve work to be done, couse you learn stuff only when you make stuff.

In theory there's no difference between theory and practice, but in practice...

CptPicard
December 6th, 2009, 03:00 PM
I am teaching a programming class. What is the simplest programming language to learn and use?

Wow, the age-old programming language flamewar topic again... it just doesn't die. ;)

The problem is the definition of "easy" and the variable views regarding what the essentials of programming actually are -- that is, in particular, what you want to be teaching first in order to provide the most beneficial learning curve. Some people would say it all boils down to CPU operations on registers and all you have to know about are the instruction set and pointers -- people who do not code in terms of these things are just lazy and afraid of pointers, and all the higher-level constructs of programming are just trivially deduced on one's own or just figments of imagination that make programming easy for code-monkeys.

I do not subscribe to this view :p

An interesting feature of programming languages is that they are theoretically equivalent in terms of what problems they can solve. The human input is still always required, but we can have quite a bit of choice regarding how we formulate the language in use so that the way it expresses a problem solution is as clear and unobstructive as possible. This is a quality you should strive for in a choice of language for students, as their most urgent task is to develop the mindset they need for algorithmic problem solution, while hopefully being exposed quickly to many of the concepts involved in programmatic problem-solving.

Learning happens best by learning from models through repetition and subsequent formulation of a mental theory of the domain. The less the flow of this is interrupted by irrelevant things and repetitive mechanical work, the more efficient the process... this is why I could never favour a teaching language that forces a use of, say, a low-level debugger or where your first problem is memory management before you can even hope to be exposed to anything more advanced.

If it was up to me, I might be as brave as to start with Scheme, but as even MIT has recently started favouring Python in their programming introduction, you may want to look there. It's very convenient to use and quick to learn the basics of, but is remarkably generic and multifaceted in the styles of approaches it allows, without introducing a lot of complication to integrate its concepts. After Python, your students are well equipped to look into other languages, and will know what they want to code in them, even though those languages didn't directly support the means of solution Python readily allows.

wmcbrine
December 6th, 2009, 03:47 PM
C is a great one to start off withNo it isn't. It's a great one to know, but not to start with.

I'd suggest a language that has real strings, and doesn't make you do your own memory management, for starters. Specifically, I'd suggest Python (see the thread "Python is the new BASIC"), but mostly I want to suggest not-C.


since it's sort of like the "Latin of Programming Languages".So, by this logic, we should teach babies Latin before they start on modern languages like English? :D

Actually I think the comparison is unfair to C, since Latin is dead, but C is not. But I see the analogy.

grayrainbow
December 6th, 2009, 04:27 PM
No it isn't. It's a great one to know, but not to start with.

I'd suggest a language that has real strings, and doesn't make you do your own memory management, for starters. Specifically, I'd suggest Python (see the thread "Python is the new BASIC"), but mostly I want to suggest not-C.

So, by this logic, we should teach babies Latin before they start on modern languages like English? :D

Actually I think the comparison is unfair to C, since Latin is dead, but C is not. But I see the analogy.
I'm agree to not start with C, but only if you are less then 15 years old ;)
Btw, english is a bit bad example couse it's kinda ambiguous.
C the great thing about see, is that it let you organize your program yourself, that mean it's language that will show what kind of programmer are you.

wmcbrine
December 6th, 2009, 06:30 PM
I'm agree to not start with C, but only if you are less then 15 years old ;)Well, ideally, I think you should start programming before 15. I did. But no, I don't think beginners of any age ought to be thrown in at the deep end.


Btw, english is a bit bad example couse it's kinda ambiguous.I figured someone would pick on that. I really meant native speakers (hence my reference to "babies"). Substitute French, or whatever you prefer; it doesn't change the point. Latin is worth knowing, and knowing it can help you to have a better understanding of your own language, if your language is one of the ones it influenced; but that doesn't mean we should start with it.


C the great thing about see, is that it let you organize your program yourself, that mean it's language that will show what kind of programmer are you.In other words, it's a hazing ritual.

CptPicard
December 6th, 2009, 06:57 PM
Well, ideally, I think you should start programming before 15. I did. But no, I don't think beginners of any age ought to be thrown in at the deep end.

Hmm, I started programming when I was 6. BASIC on an antique machine. :) The thing with this supposed "deep end" is that the C-guys like to think that it genuinely represents some sort of beneficial deep end*where you're actually learning something of value while banging away at a language that is so rudimentary that you're not really seeing/doing much of interest any time soon. The stuff you have to do with C from the beginning is just stuff that is in the way to begin with, and that you will know how to actually properly use for something once you've already dealt with a language that has, among many other things, demonstrated the principles that include the conceptual essentials of C. Rest are details.



In other words, it's a hazing ritual.

+1, so it seems. :)

grayrainbow
December 6th, 2009, 07:32 PM
Well, ideally, I think you should start programming before 15. I did. But no, I don't think beginners of any age ought to be thrown in at the deep end.

I figured someone would pick on that. I really meant native speakers (hence my reference to "babies"). Substitute French, or whatever you prefer; it doesn't change the point. Latin is worth knowing, and knowing it can help you to have a better understanding of your own language, if your language is one of the ones it influenced; but that doesn't mean we should start with it.

In other words, it's a hazing ritual.
I get your point the first time ;)

Why are you feel hazed by code you write? :( nobody is perfect!

maximinus_uk
December 7th, 2009, 04:03 PM
To the OP:

I'm an English teacher in China, and was recently asked to teach a 15 year old boy programming. At school they have the chance of learning C/C++/Pascal, but his mother has decided to ask me to teach him.

After a bit of thought, and I'm interested to know what others think, we're currently 4 weeks into this route (which should be about 2 years long, 1.5 hours + homework per week):


Learn Python - it's easy to use
Learn C - simple and low level
Learn Lisp - totally different from the previous 2
Learn BASH - simple scripting

Reiger
December 7th, 2009, 04:21 PM
A 15 year old is going to enjoy writing nice GUI apps that do something useful better than tinkering with the raw headers of a TCP/IP packet.

In that vein I'd say Python over C. Although Bash might actually be another good choice there since it is perhaps even closer to the write-something-useful over tinkering-with-raw-things idea.

wmcbrine
December 7th, 2009, 04:28 PM
I like it, although I'm not sure I'd put bash at the end.

CptPicard
December 7th, 2009, 05:27 PM
After a bit of thought, and I'm interested to know what others think, we're currently 4 weeks into this route (which should be about 2 years long, 1.5 hours + homework per week):

This idea of yours is pretty much what we've (well, some of us ;) ) have been pushing here for years to noobs. Many have come back telling us it worked, so there's something there.

I just might reduce the number of languages to either "Python and C" or "Lisp and C". It really depends on the level of interest of this student of yours. Bash can be learned piecemeal as you go, using the command line.

Pulling in Lisp early on is an interesting concept, but I fear it might be a turn-off if it is judged to be either weird or "not-useful". Then again, the imperative mindset dies hard, so perhaps not letting it grow too strong in the beginning might be a good idea. But Python lets you do functional-ish programming too.

You also should not neglect to demonstrate some important language-independent stuff too while you're teaching the languages. See if you can fit in sorting algorithms and basic data structures...

Warpnow
December 7th, 2009, 08:53 PM
Sorry, can't edit the post because chromium doesn't seem to work with the edit button here.

http://www.realsoftware.com/store/opensource

Free for use on opensource projects.

stevescripts
December 7th, 2009, 09:02 PM
Another $.02 from an(other) old-fart ...

I would avoid any sort of BASIC like the plague - today's scripting languages are a far superior place to begin ...

CPT Picard - interesting concept beginning with LISP ...
( if it just werent for all of the ((())) ) ;)

Steve

nvteighen
December 7th, 2009, 09:17 PM
CPT Picard - interesting concept beginning with LISP ...
( if it just werent for all of the ((())) ) ;)


MIT had Scheme as its introductory language before Python (IIRC, this was changed two years ago). It's not a that bad idea, I think.

grayrainbow
December 7th, 2009, 09:34 PM
Another $.02 from an(other) old-fart ...

I would avoid any sort of BASIC like the plague - today's scripting languages are a far superior place to begin ...

CPT Picard - interesting concept beginning with LISP ...
( if it just werent for all of the ((())) ) ;)

Steve
LISP is stupid decision not becouse of ((())), but couse it try to be something that was never design to be, and it does not perform well on it's main purpose. Alternative is Scheme and it should be use exactly becouse of ((())) not as an first language of course ;)
If I think more Lua seems to be the perfect one for kids.

@maximinus_uk, are you aware of what could happen if one try to learn french, spanish, italian, and english at same time? I mean, with respect to all languages, putting C/C++ next to Pascal is like putting C/C++ next to nothing(on current world situation), but if one learn Pascal at school...

ve4cib
December 7th, 2009, 10:54 PM
LISP is stupid decision not becouse of ((())), but couse it try to be something that was never design to be, and it does not perform well on it's main purpose. Alternative is Scheme and it should be use exactly becouse of ((())) not as an first language of course ;)

What? I assume by "Lisp" you mean "Common Lisp"? Because Scheme and Common Lisp are both different dialects of the same root Lisp language.

What does Common Lisp try to do but fail at? And how does Scheme accomplish these tasks better?

Sorry, maybe it's just a spelling/language issue, but I really don't understand what you're trying to say.

JordyD
December 7th, 2009, 11:20 PM
Pulling in Lisp early on is an interesting concept, but I fear it might be a turn-off if it is judged to be either weird or "not-useful".

What would make Lisp seem weirder or less useful than any other first programming language?

ve4cib
December 7th, 2009, 11:29 PM
What would make Lisp seem weirder or less useful than any other first programming language?

Probably the fact that outside of a few very small, niche areas of computing it's never really used. I'm a big fan of Lisp, but outside of academia I have never, ever had to use it in the professional world.

When was the last time you saw any kind of programming/software engineering/development job posting that said "Knowledge of Lisp is an asset"? That's what I thought.

Lisp as a teaching tool to illustrate recursion, and to teach students alternate ways of approaching a problem is great. But teaching Lisp under the guise that it is actually useful in the real-world as a language is either self-delusion at worst, or wishful thinking at best.

I would argue that Lisp is a good thing to be exposed to, provided that it is not the only thing being exposed to. Most of the strange features of Lisp can be replicated in other languages like Ruby, Python, and Javascript, making those languages arguably more-suitable for instruction purposes.

JordyD
December 7th, 2009, 11:41 PM
Probably the fact that outside of a few very small, niche areas of computing it's never really used. I'm a big fan of Lisp, but outside of academia I have never, ever had to use it in the professional world.

When was the last time you saw any kind of programming/software engineering/development job posting that said "Knowledge of Lisp is an asset"? That's what I thought.

Lisp as a teaching tool to illustrate recursion, and to teach students alternate ways of approaching a problem is great. But teaching Lisp under the guise that it is actually useful in the real-world as a language is either self-delusion at worst, or wishful thinking at best.

I would argue that Lisp is a good thing to be exposed to, provided that it is not the only thing being exposed to. Most of the strange features of Lisp can be replicated in other languages like Ruby, Python, and Javascript, making those languages arguably more-suitable for instruction purposes.

I think when you refer to the "real-world" you're talking about the corporate world. At 15, are you really worried about that? I don't think it matters what language you learn first, as there is no reason why your first language should be your only language.

CptPicard
December 7th, 2009, 11:56 PM
What would make Lisp seem weirder or less useful than any other first programming language?

Ask the non-Lisp-fanbois, they seem to know the reasons rather well; I am not the one making the claim usually ;)


I'm a big fan of Lisp, but outside of academia I have never, ever had to use it in the professional world.

Which is kind of unfortunate; for example the SBCL implementation is actually quite an impressive platform. With some added polish and in particular more library implementation, there is no reason why it couldn't be a very workable solution for a lot of things, in particular client-server-style applications that are so prevalent these days.



When was the last time you saw any kind of programming/software engineering/development job posting that said "Knowledge of Lisp is an asset"? That's what I thought.

If I were hiring, I'd be very interested in hearing of lispers. The whole deal is that a lisper is probably a strong programmer, period, in any language. And with a bunch of lisp hackers, who knows what might come up.



Lisp as a teaching tool to illustrate recursion, and to teach students alternate ways of approaching a problem is great. But teaching Lisp under the guise that it is actually useful in the real-world as a language is either self-delusion at worst, or wishful thinking at best.

The educational strength of Lisp is the ease with which you can expose to so much stuff, in all kinds of ways, without having to actually teach much "language" beforehand. A really, really important aspect of how Lisp is useful in the real world is if you end up writing some kind of language-evaluator yourself... chances are understanding Lisp's evaluation model will give you 90% of what you need. Rest is syntactic sugar you can generate a parser for. Even GCC's internal representation is continuation-passing-style "Lisp"!



Most of the strange features of Lisp can be replicated in other languages like Ruby, Python, and Javascript, making those languages arguably more-suitable for instruction purposes.

Most of those languages can be seen just as corner cases of Lisp -- they have fixed some specific syntax for certain constructs. The core feature of Lisp -- homoiconicity, that you get from those nasty parens -- can't be achieved (I suppose) in any other way except how Lisp already does it.

ve4cib
December 8th, 2009, 01:02 AM
I think when you refer to the "real-world" you're talking about the corporate world. At 15, are you really worried about that? I don't think it matters what language you learn first, as there is no reason why your first language should be your only language.

At 15 you're probably more interested in writing visually-interactive programs than doing something that falls under the umbrella of "pure" programming. I know when I was 15 or 16 doing intro CS in high school the most enjoyable assignments were ones with lots of user-interaction. Binary search trees, while exceptionally useful in the real world, are far less-interesting than writing a game of "Click on the Randomly-Bouncing Button" to your typical teenager.


And to answer the question, by "real world" I mean the corporate world in-part. The "real world" in my definition is the sum total of all programming done everywhere for any purpose. That includes (but may not be limited to): corporate/business programming; OSS projects like Linux, OpenOffice, Firefox, and Mono; academic programming for AI/robotics research, HCI research; hobbyist spare-time projects like personal websites and batch programming, etc...

Now, is your typical 15-year-old concerned with what's used most-frequently out in the real world? Probably not. But the teacher, the school administration, and the student's parents may very well be. So by choosing programming languages and concepts that have the widest-possible use and application is a very good idea from an instructional perspective.

By focusing primarily on the C-style, imperative languages (C, C++, C#, (Visual) Basic, Java, Python, etc...) you expose students to the styles of programming that are most-often used in business and most OSS projects. Concepts like conditional statements (if/else if/else, switch), and loops (for, while, do while) are probably the most important things to get across early on. Those concepts really form the backbone of most modern programming. Once those basics are done you can move on to more complex topics, like creating custom functions/methods, object-orientation and inheritance, and recursion.

nvteighen
December 8th, 2009, 12:30 PM
Probably the fact that outside of a few very small, niche areas of computing it's never really used. I'm a big fan of Lisp, but outside of academia I have never, ever had to use it in the professional world.


Well... Emacs? LOGO was Lisp-based... And this list (http://common-lisp.net/projects.shtml) has a lot of projects too, so people are using Common Lisp for something. This doesn't mean Common Lisp is a enterprisey language like Java, but it does mean that it seems to cover practical issues... not like Scheme, which just recently had its standard language revised for a 6th time in order to become a bit more practical.



And to answer the question, by "real world" I mean the corporate world in-part. The "real world" in my definition is the sum total of all programming done everywhere for any purpose. That includes (but may not be limited to): corporate/business programming; OSS projects like Linux, OpenOffice, Firefox, and Mono; academic programming for AI/robotics research, HCI research; hobbyist spare-time projects like personal websites and batch programming, etc...


Where would my FreeTruco project be classified? I'd like to be considered part of academia! Can I, can I, can I? :P

Currently I consider it a weird unique 101% useless project but with interesting theorical ideas in some code snippets (like my pure-functional card dealing code :))

grayrainbow
December 8th, 2009, 06:42 PM
The educational strength of Lisp is the ease with which you can expose to so much stuff, in all kinds of ways, without having to actually teach much "language" beforehand. A really, really important aspect of how Lisp is useful in the real world is if you end up writing some kind of language-evaluator yourself... chances are understanding Lisp's evaluation model will give you 90% of what you need. Rest is syntactic sugar you can generate a parser for. Even GCC's internal representation is continuation-passing-style "Lisp"!

continuation-passing-style? You probably mean Algol preprocessor ;)
What's more use is SSA.
And the problem of most of the modern "general purpose" scripts is that...they really don't get much further in evolution of evaluation, which make them kinda useless, well ok, they do not use so much parenthesis which is good for bigger programs, but that does not change the fact that the hardware is much ahead of a software, and most programmers will just say "give me more resources" in case of bit harder problem, which is the case of moder Lisp also, when the language is domain specific...it's domain specific.
But...that's kinda diverse from original post, I think.


I think when you refer to the "real-world" you're talking about the corporate world. At 15, are you really worried about that? I don't think it matters what language you learn first, as there is no reason why your first language should be your only language.
I think when on 15 years you are more wary about the opposite sex, not <put your fav programming language here>. Don't forget that there's world(quite beautiful world) outside programming. Which usually mean that in your early ages learning more than 2/3 programming languages to some degree, will more likely make you depressed person, not programmer. That doesn't mean your mother to not wary about your future, which usually mean your bank account, but we all know that flowers and world peace are much more important then this bank account :)

maximinus_uk
December 14th, 2009, 04:05 PM
I know I'm updating a old thread here, but I'd just like to point out that the list I provided for teaching this 15 year old didn't make it plain:


First, I'll teach Python
Then I teach C
After that, we'll cover Lisp
Over the whole course, we'll learn BASH and Linux


Obviously, learning all those languages together would be a killer!

slickymaster
March 7th, 2013, 11:25 AM
BASIC:
It is the basis of several programming languages today. There are several easy to learn functions, and the syntax is also very simple. There’s no needed “;” at the end of each line which just makes it a bit easier and nicer to use.
It’s a great starting programming language and is one of the easiest programming languages to learn and use. It’s a great predecessor to more complicated programming languages and it’s free. I would recommend trying it out.

KPL:
Kid’s Programming Language is exactly what it’s called. It was built so kids could learn how to program. It’s also a good programming language to learn programming with even if you’re not a kid though.
Unlike BASIC or QBASIC KPL allows image use. This makes it a lot more fun to use as you can make graphical programs and games. It’s a fun and easy programming language, although it may be a little hard to grasp at first.

Lua:
It’s fast, lightweight, and is embeddable. It has a very easy to use syntax and can be implemented into anything. It has been used in a lot of video games including World of Warcraft. It’s a popular, fast, easy to use and implement programming language. I would check it out.

Visual Basic:
Visual Basic has a ton of built in functions that you can use. These functions do pretty much everything you will need to use. From detecting inputs to converting variable types it can do it all. It’s a great language with a great tool.

Python:
Object-Oriented Programming Language. It runs on most every computer. It also includes a development environment. Python is mostly used in Web, Networking, Software, and Game Development. It has a wide range of functionality and is easy to use, learn, and create end products for.

Once you know a programming language, it’s very easy to learn other ones. Generally the only thing that changes is the syntax. The thing that doesn’t change is how you break a problem down to solve it.

varunendra
March 7th, 2013, 11:30 AM
Old thread closed.