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programming languages


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If you're anything like me you're probably fed-up of hearing n00bs talk about what's the best language, php isn't a language, or whatever. The fact of the matter is that Another killer is what's the best language for a n00b to learn.

a) languages are designed to fit a purpose. Not just for the job, but for a development philosophy.

b) best language = best language for the job

c) php is a programming language. Compiled or not it has classes, functions, and all the other control structures. Same goes for perl, python, etc.

d) noob asks which language to learn. This one appears everywhere all the time. two good answers: i) language that you can turn a flowchart into code easily ii) see a and b. Most n00bs confuse api with language. Learn language first, api's 2nd.

I kept it nice and short. I do believe we should make a thread with typical user goals, and which languages to choose. make that a sticky.

Its not so bad on this site lately, but i can't say the same elsewhere. I really get peeved by those learn c# people though some times and then diss old stuff calling it antiquated etc. Hell fortran is from the bloody 50's and still highly in use! It does the job well, so what if its old.

Edited by Goalie_CA
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part of the reason for an increase in " noobs " asking about languages is alot of people going to college/uni will be starting programming like myself and u continue programming into the 2nd year so theres bound to be alot of interest in the programming section at the mo.

I say just learn c++,c# and visual basic and u can do most things. Old things arnt necessarily a good thing tho. On my course we ar learning to use visual basic 6 but the latest version of visual basic is the.net 2003 version which is completely different to the visual basic 6.

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I kept it nice and short. I do believe we should make a thread with typical user goals, and which languages to choose. make that a sticky.

Feel free to write one up (Y) If it's suitable, it might be pinned.

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What bugs me a lot is syntax changes. You write hundreds of lines of code in Microsoft Access 1.0, for instance. Then in Access 2.0 it breaks. So you recode it for Access 2 and the next version of Access breaks it. Same thing when MS did the changes to Visual Basic syntax, including the XOR operator, if I remember right. I HATE that kind of stuff.

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Same thing when MS did the changes to Visual Basic syntax, including the XOR operator, if I remember right.  I HATE that kind of stuff.

Well...

If you're comparing VB.NET and VB6, they're totally different languages with a few of the same keywords and conventions.

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i would say to learn .NET and C#. why, you ask? because if you learn the .NET base class library you can use any .net language because all .net languages can access these classes. you can also use COM objects just as easily. i say learn C# because from that you can program in java (whiich means you can use J# too), C++, etc.

thats what i think, because i said so.

STV

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Totally agree... some people here "VB" and they're just inclined to say oh that's a pooey language, most people generalise so much, i think if a programming does the job you want it to do, no matter how old it is or what it is, it's still good.

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Well, said, the best language is the best one that fits for the job in the best way, there should ve a pinned topic with the best features of each language so newbie people can choose the best one they need :D

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You should learn C (NOT C++) first. Once you do, you can learn every other language. Don't go with .NET at first. Once you learn that, you a restricted to just Windows. You can say good bye to other OSes (and Mono is too far yet... It will be though. :)). When you finish C, learn a cross platform API. such as GTK+, XUL, wxWindows, Java (well, I konw it is a lnaguage, but...), et cetera.

But if you are going to just program in Windows (...) .NET is fine. Just perfect. I actually wish there was a .NET type language for other operating systems... (Delphi is nice and all, but it isn't free, ecxept for Linux).

That is what I have to say about the People wanting to learn programming.

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C and C++ are similar syntactically, but C is procedural and C++ is (mostly) object-oriented. knowing C does not mean you automatically know C++ or vise versa. personally, i don't think it matters what language you learn first so long as you get down basic programming concepts. learning C first is good for this, but the trend seems to be OO, so i think most colleges are leaning that way with C++ and Java.

i agree with the comment that you should learn programming concepts first and then APIs. when you do get into APIs, it's good to have experience with more than one - if you only know MFC or .NET that really constrains you to windows (nobody uses MFC for unix do they...?). if you become a good all-around programmer/software designer then it won't matter what language a project needs because you'll be able to pick it up relatively quickly. you can also see where it's better to use precedural/OO for each case.

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A lot of the arguments i'm seeing is if you learn language X, you can learn language Y. Well this is because once you can learn programming fundamentals on practically any language. API's are irellevant when learning (the fundamentals). They are something you'll learn as you need anyways.

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