[Cialug] Hello and can I get some recommendations

[Chris Freeman]

Start with C (NOT C++) or Python (or Ruby). When you can comfortably program
book exercises in one, start the other.

While you're learning the second language, start practicing refactoring and
TDD. Both are skills to help keep programs small and nimble.

Learn functional programming next! You can do this while your programs are
still small, and it will have a huge impact on how you think.

Finally, learn object oriented programming. This is really just a way to
organize your programs. Learn it when your programs start to grow in size.

Why Python? It is more readable to novices than just about any other
language. It supports syntactic niceties like generators and list
comprehensions. It has native support for associative arrays.

Why C? It is a very simple language. It will make you understand pointers,
and pointers are important. It is the lingua-franca of programming, and will
remain so for many years to come. (Actually, it will never be supplanted,
but it will be joined by Javascript for web programming.)

By the way, you can do functional and object-oriented programming in both C
and Python, though another language might be nicer. Since C doesn't have
closures or function literals, it is a bit clumsy for learning functional
programming.


Chris
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