How to start programming - guides and links for many languages

[docetes]

a good object orientated progamming tutorial http://sep.stanford.edu/sep/jon/family/jos/oop/oop1.htm

[mixium]

Hi,

I just wanted to add that in my experience, the single most important part of learning to program is to have a problem that you want to solve before you decide to start learning to program. I myself started and stopped learning several times as I just wanted to know how to program but had not thought out why I wanted to learn in the first place. Apart from the wealth of knowledge these guys are offering, you must find a concrete source of motivation or you will stop learning at the first road block you come to.

Stay motivated, learning is always a good thing.

Michael

[cunawarit]

C#

Why?

• Tons of job opportunities.
• Nobody has posted it here before
• Very similar to Java.
• Object Oriented.
• Great IDEs available for it.

Why not?

• Most jobs will be Windows development.
• Last time I checked average salaries were lower than for Java developers.

IDEs

• MonoDevelop - Available with most Linux distros: http://www.monodevelop.com
• Visual Studio - Windows only - Express is free as in beer: http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/

Useful links

• Comparison between C# and Java - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compari...Sharp_and_Java
• Microsoft info for C# noobs - http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vcsharp/aa336766.aspx
• C# articles, code, community - http://www.csharpcorner.com/
• Mono - http://www.mono-project.com/Main_Page
• .NET Framework - http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/net...k/default.aspx
• ASP.NET apps in Linux - http://www.mono-project.com/ASP.NET

[Mirrorball]

PHP

From php.net: PHP is a widely-used general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for Web development and can be embedded into HTML.

Why?

• It's easy to learn.
• It's easy to find cheap PHP hosting for your site. If you develop with Ruby, Java, or Python, you will probably have to spend more money.
• Lots of PHP scripts are available: content management systems, forum scripts, picture galleries, blog scripts etc. Most of them are open source.
• Very large number of users. It's the most popular programming language for developing web applications.
• Object-oriented programming is optional, but well supported.

Why not?

• Companies prefer Java or .NET.
• It's very easy to write messy unmaintanable code.

IDEs

• PDT plugin for Eclipse: http://www.eclipse.org/pdt/
• Zend Studio (not free): http://www.zend.com/products/zend_studio

But any text editor with syntax highlighting is good enough for PHP programming.

How to Install Apache + PHP5

sudo apt-get install apache2 libapache2-mod-php5

To verify your installation, you can run following script:

<?php
echo phpinfo();

Save it as /var/www/phpinfo.php and point your browser to http://localhost/phpinfo.php You should see a lot of information about your PHP installation.
More about setting up a server: https://help.ubuntu.com/6.10/ubuntu/...e/C/index.html

Learning and Reference Resources

• Always your first resource: http://www.php.net/
• Sitepoint: http://www.sitepoint.com/

There are lots of PHP resources on the web because PHP is immensely popular. You'll find many others yourself.

Frameworks

If you already know how to program:

• Zend Framework: http://framework.zend.com/
• Symfony: http://www.symfony-project.com/
• CakePHP: http://www.cakephp.org/
• Code Igniter: http://codeigniter.com/

Scripts

• Wordpress: for blogs and simple sites. http://wordpress.org/
• Joomla: content management system. http://www.joomla.org/
• Drupal: content management system. http://drupal.org/
• phpbb: forum script. http://www.phpbb.com/
• PunBB: another forum script. http://www.punbb.org/
• Vanilla: yet another forum script. http://getvanilla.com/
• Gallery: for picture galleries. http://gallery.menalto.com/
• Coppermine: also for galleries. http://coppermine.sourceforge.net/

[TreeFinger]

Very nice thread
I am glad I checked the ubuntu forums instead of trying to dig through google's results.
Thank you very much

[WW]

In the post about C, this page is suggested: http://www.faqs.org/docs/learnc/

It turns out that the examples in this tutorial are riddled with errors. I don't think this tutorial should be recommended.

[Kingsley]

The third linked C++ tutorial is nice but I keep getting a warning error when I compile its examples;

/usr/lib/gcc/i486-linux-gnu/4.1.2/../../../../include/c++/4.1.2/backward/backward_warning.h:32:2: warning: #warning This file includes at least one deprecated or antiquated header. Please consider using one of the 32 headers found in section 17.4.1.2 of the C++ standard. Examples include substituting the <X> header for the <X.h> header for C++ includes, or <iostream> instead of the deprecated header <iostream.h>. To disable this warning use -Wno-deprecated.

In summary, it's saying that <iostream.h> is deprecated. Could this particular tutorial be outdated?

[po0f]

Kingsley,

Yes the tutorial is outdated, but this isn't a discussion thread.

If you would repost your problem in a new thread, I'm sure people will help you out.

[runningwithscissors]

In the post about C, this page is suggested: http://www.faqs.org/docs/learnc/

It turns out that the examples in this tutorial are riddled with errors. I don't think this tutorial should be recommended.

Which ones?

[WW]

runningwithscissors: Check out this thread: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=396904
In particular, see my post on the second page.

EDIT: Here are some more specifc details of problems in that tutorial. I started browsing in Section 5.

Section 5.3, Example 5-2: more missing semicolons.
Section 5.5, Example 5-3: missing #include <stdio.h>
Section 6.3, Example 6-1: index is out-of-bounds
Section 6.4, Example 6-2: In the for statement, the last character should be ), not }
Section 6.8, Example 6-4: 1. Declaration of 'name' in the Person struct is not correct; it should be
                               char name[40];
                          2. Initialization of hero is not correct; should be
                               struct Person hero = {"Robin Hood", 20, 191};
                          3. Code declares the variable sidekick but uses john
                          4. Missing semicolon after
                               john.name = "John Little"
                          5. Character arrays can not be assigned with a statement such as
                               john.name = "John Little";
                             One way to fix this is to use
                               strncpy(john.name,"John Little",39);
                             (But one should also be aware of how strncpy handles null-terminated strings.)
                             If strncpy is used, add #include <string.h> at the top of the file.
Section 9.3, Example 9-1: The program prints the squares of the numbers 2 through 12, not 0 through 9 as the
                          author claims.