What is (are) the best programming language(s) for beginners?

[camuflage]

In your personal opinion which is (are) the best programming language(s) for beginners? There's always some discordance generated but it's interesting to debate and promote new ideas.

[Andre S. Veteran]

My vote goes to C#, but check out the Getting Started FAQ for a discussion of the advantages and drawbacks of the most popular choices.

[RoomKid]

Where's ma PHP? :whistle:

I feel thats the easiest language, most probably because I haven't looked into other languages. :laugh:

[Advis]

Learned Pascal at college, despite the fact that the teacher had pretty much no tutoring skills whatsoever (monotone voice, monotone voice, monotone voice) I still was able to learn a few tricks with it. Voted Pascal.

[CrossCheck]

Basic....the name says it all

[paxa]

start by using pascal, it's the best one to start developing

[Glen]

Another vote for C#. You can use it for both client side and web coding and there are MANY examples to learn from. Since it's syntax is similar to C, the transition to Java, JS, PHP, and other C syntax languages is easier.

[alfaaqua]

"are"? Why didnt you make this a check box multiple answer poll?

Best language period: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOLCODE

[Eric Veteran]

Is Pascal even valid for teaching programming anymore? I'm not aware of a whole lot of uses for structured programming other than for WoW Addons and the like anymore. :)

[camuflage]

"are"? Why didnt you make this a check box multiple answer poll?

Best language period: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOLCODE

You're right, and i already corrected it!

[IceBreakerG]

My vote goes to C# as well. I started out doing Basic, then Visual Basic, then VB.NET then transitioned to C#. I wish C# was around in 2000 though when I started programming. C#'s syntax is very very similar to Java, so going from C# to Java would be pretty easy. Also, like Glen said, it'd be easier to go to another language. Plus, Microsoft's development tools are the best!

[Lant]

PHP is very easy to program in as well, and there's a lot of motivation because its very easy for others to see your work without distributing anything.

[Marshall Veteran]

Where's Fortran? :rofl:

[Stetson]

Java and C# are both pretty equal I think, and their syntax isn't too incredibly foreign from C/C++

C# has better tools for building nice interfaces though with WPF, Java falls short in that area.

[RoomKid]

PHP is very easy to program in as well, and there's a lot of motivation because its very easy for others to see your work without distributing anything.

You're my friend, a PHP supporter. Can we have PHP in the list now :p

[smooth_criminal1990]

I reckon it depends what you're gonna be doing with it:

C is good for lower-level stuff like PICs, or *NIX as that's what it's written in, and provides a good base for C++/Java (as C is not object-oriented and these 2 are). And it's good for cross-platform stuff if you stick to ANSI standard.

Otherwise if you want to get straight into shiny GUIs and higher level stuff, probably one of the .net languages like VB or C#.net.

And Perl, although it is C-like with major quirks, is useful for web-stuff like CGI (as in Common Gateway Interface) and it's a good base for PHP (obviously).

Having learned the basics of VB.net then a lot of C, I found stuff like Perl and Javascript (not java!) easy to pick up, so anything C-like is a good thing to know!

[camuflage]

You're my friend, a PHP supporter. Can we have PHP in the list now :p

You got it, lol

[+Majesticmerc MVC]

I'd say that the best language to learn programming with is Python. That said, it depends entirely on what you want to do. C and C++ are worthwhile learning, but they are complex languages which are most easily learned in an academic environment (universities often teach these), and not by yourself (although some of the knowledge learned through these languages isn't learned using other languages). C# is a good, clean language based on C-style syntax, and is good if you don't really want to understand the underlying concepts, but are more focused on rapid application development and instant gratification. VB.NET is good in this respect too, however the syntax learned doesn't transfer as well between languages as C-based languages do.

My preference goes to Python simply for the fact that if you want to learn the absolute basics of programming Python can give you that facility while hiding away any of the other things that you might need to know as a programmer. Python can be mostly written without any convoluted syntax such as curly braces and forces the object-oriented programming style which is common among most languages used today. It does hide a lot of complexity away from you, which can be both an advantage and a disadvantage at the same time, its also hella slow, and running code written in Python can be many times slower than the same code written in a lower-level language such as C. :)

For anyone that's interested, there's a nice graphical comparison of the speed/code-size of a lot of different languages at http://blog.gmarceau.qc.ca/2009/05/speed-size-and-dependability-of.html. Whats interesting there is that two of the most highly ranked languages are Lua, and F#, although I can't comment since I've tried neither language!

[Dodzey]

For anyone that's interested, there's a nice graphical comparison of the speed/code-size of a lot of different languages at http://blog.gmarceau.qc.ca/2009/05/speed-size-and-dependability-of.html. Whats interesting there is that two of the most highly ranked languages are Lua, and F#, although I can't comment since I've tried neither language!

Lua is a fantastic language, both for ease of learning and syntax-wise. It is interpreted, however, like a lot of the other scripting languages, so it's not particularly fast, but faster than most interpreted languages I believe. It's great for embedding into C++ applications to provide scripting support. There is also a JIT compiler available that can be embedded with the C++ interpreter as well, which speeds things up nicely. It has quite a large following with video games development, where it is used quite often, notable example being Crysis/CryEngine. I think one of the developers for that rolled his own scripting language called Squirrel which was based on what he had found he liked/disliked about lua.

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

I think Basic/VB.NET, mainly because that's what I started out on and it was easy for me to grasp the concepts (syntax is easy)

[+Matthew S. Subscriber²]

Nah the best language for beginners is brainfunk (n should be c :p):laugh:

+++++ +++++ initialize counter (cell #0) to 10
[ use loop to set the next four cells to 70/100/30/10
 > +++++ ++ add 7 to cell #1
 > +++++ +++++ add 10 to cell #2 
 > +++ add 3 to cell #3
 > + add 1 to cell #4
 <<<< - decrement counter (cell #0)
] 
> ++ . print 'H'
> + . print 'e'
+++++ ++ . print 'l'
. print 'l'
+++ . print 'o'
> ++ . print ' '
<< +++++ +++++ +++++ . print 'W'
> . print 'o'
+++ . print 'r'
----- - . print 'l'
----- --- . print 'd'
> + . print '!'
> . print '\n'

[Dick Montage]

For web I say PHP, for Winforms I say C#.

[~Johnny]

I'd say the easiest to start with is VB.NET - it's got a more "english like" syntax than C#. If you have no programming experience at all, jumping into C# straight away can be more confusing then jumping into VB.NET. (Of Course, you can also try Microsoft's Small basic which is also invaluable for getting people to grips with the basics amd heading them off to the bigger world!)

Start with VB, and if you feel the need after you're comfortable with it, learn C# as well (which also gets you part way there to Java as well). Also any language you can learn with full in Visual Studio's IDE would help greatly, simply because features like intellisense are so very helpful, especially for a beginner.

[Xilo]

I'd say the easiest to start with is VB.NET - it's got a more "english like" syntax than C#. If you have no programming experience at all, jumping into C# straight away can be more confusing then jumping into VB.NET. (Of Course, you can also try Microsoft's Small basic which is also invaluable for getting people to grips with the basics amd heading them off to the bigger world!)

Start with VB, and if you feel the need after you're comfortable with it, learn C# as well (which also gets you part way there to Java as well). Also any language you can learn with full in Visual Studio's IDE would help greatly, simply because features like intellisense are so very helpful, especially for a beginner.

Personally, I think VB's "English like" syntax is too verbose and convoluted. Just skip it and go to C#.

[Rudy]

I'm a believer of C then C++ and THEN move to something like C#, Java or Objective-C. But I know lots of people disagree

[Dick Montage]

I'm a believer of C then C++ and THEN move to something like C#, Java or Objective-C. But I know lots of people disagree

Suggesting to start on a harder, heavier language? Really?

I am keen to understand your thoughts further?