[wplug] first language

[Weber, Larry A]

As you may know the author of Perl, Larry Wall, drew heavily upon C, sed,
awk, and English.  From my experience(~10 years of Perl), people who know C
first tend to write their Perl scripts using mostly C constructs.  While
this can work, it does not take advantage of many of the more unique
features of Perl.  Probably the same hold true for Java.

C and Java are both strongly typed languages and will force you into at
least some good programming practices.  Perl lets you get away with almost
anything.  It is pretty hard to write a Perl script that won't execute.
This can be a plus to a new programmer, but it can also encourage bad
programming style.

Perl 5.x's OO is pretty lame so learning C++ or Java should be considered a
different path in your programming skills development.

I guess your future needs should be your best guide.  If you think you will
be using C then I would suggest you spend a little time learning only the
basics of C first.  Use the time to develop some good programming habits.
Later move on to Perl.  If nothing else this way will give you a good
appreciation of the power of Perl.  Later pick up Java and/or C++.

On the other hand if you know that you will be doing your sys admin work in
Perl then by all means learn it now.  Later you will see how much harder it
is to do almost everything in C or Java.



> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Scott Bourns [SMTP:scott at scottbourns.com]
> Sent:	Tuesday, April 01, 2003 10:35 AM
> To:	wplug at wplug.org
> Subject:	[wplug] first language
> 
> I need some advice from sys/net admins and web gurus about a first
> programming language to start with.
> 
> I want to add some programming to my knowledge bank. My primary focus is
> network/system administration, but I'm heading more and more toward the
> web/remote admin category as well.
> 
> I think I want to add some Java, PERL, PHP to my skill list, but I have
> very little programming background (a little exposure to C and some
> hacking of PHP and Java).
> 
> Where should I begin? Which language should I really know first?
> 
> In other words, I'm ready to knuckle down, but I don't want to head in
> the wrong direction and get frustrated by wasted or fruitless efforts.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Scott
> 
> P.S. Obviously, this would be a convenient time to start with PERL, but
> do I need to know a fair amount of C/C++ first?
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> wplug mailing list
> wplug at wplug.org
> http://www.wplug.org/mailman/listinfo/wplug