[wplug] first language

[Tim Lesher]

On Tue, Apr 01, 2003 at 10:47:13AM -0500, Mike Griffin wrote:
> My programming is pretty much limited to shell scripts, and some mild C 
> stuff, so I haven't attacked this myself yet, but I heard that python 
> was a good language to start with. It's supposed to be easy, yet 
> useful, to learn and use. Anyone have more of an  insight on this?

I agree completely.  Python is a very good balance between ease of
learning and language power.  I've been a C and C++ programmer for ten
years (oh, wow... didn't realize it was this long until now!), and I'm
slowly moving more and more code into Python.

Understand that if you really want to be an effective programmer and
do it for a living, you really should learn lower-level languages at
some point.  C++ or C for certain, and you should probably get a
working grasp of assembly language, if for no other reason that to
understand what the higher-level languages like Java, Perl, and Python
do and why they do it.  That doesn't mean you need to learn low-level
stuff first--just eventually.

But if your intent is 'casual' programming as a hobbyist or to enhance
your daily work, I'd recommend Python.

-- 
Tim Lesher <tim at lesher.ws>
http://www.lesher.ws