What to start with? [Archive]

Jussi Kukkonen

October 2nd, 2006, 06:10 PM

Depends mostly on what you want to do... A very important part of every programming project is to pick the right tool for the job. Normally the right tool is preferably something you know well, but since you also want to learn you have more choices.

Python is nice to have in your toolbox (readable, O-O, good libraries, pretty fast), but there are loads of other choices too... Perl, Tcl, Ruby, and so on. Java or C#/Mono have quite nice standard libraries, but I wouldn't recommend either if you don't intend to spend quite a lot of time working with them -- knowing the API is a big part of being a good coder on these languages, and the APIs are huge. If you look at what languages are used in linux apps today, you can't forget C or C++ either. If you intend to work on existing free software projects (which is a great way to learn), be prepared to see C.

If you intend to do graphical apps, another important choice is selecting the toolkits you use (e.g. gtk+, wxwidgets,...): Some languages have better bindings to some graphical toolkits than others.

My advice: pick a project you want to do, then select a language (and toolkits/libraries) that seem to fit. If you made a good choice, then all is well. If you made a bad choice, you've learnt a lot ;)