[wplug] Best programming language for beginner?

[David J. Pryke]

I endorse and agree with what most of the longer, more intelligent responses
have said, but I wanted to point out a fairly usable into to programming
book I have looked at in the past. There are several versions out there,
including those based on Python, OCaml, C++, and Java; I recommend the
Python one if you have any interest in learning Python, and no great
interest in revisiting Java.

The goal, ultimately, is to help you through the thought process of
programming itself, independent of the language, but to also help you build
skills in one language while you do that.

The book in general is called "How to Think Like a Computer Scientist" and
is freely available online, as it has a Creative Commons
(Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported) License. You can search for that
title if you would like to find other versions, but here are links to a few
of the Python ones:

http://openbookproject.net/thinkcs/

http://www.greenteapress.com/thinkpython/

If you want to read some Amazon reviews of the text (there was a hard copy
edition available for purchase), go to:
http://www.amazon.com/How-Think-Like-Computer-Scientist/dp/0971677506

And of course, a web search for more, based on the title:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22how+to+think+like+a+computer+scientist%22

Whatever you choose to do, good luck! Be persistent, ask questions, and have
fun!

-- David J. Pryke
david at pryke.us



On 2/22/2013 12:34 PM, Brian Makin wrote:
> There are two main schools of thought here, top down or bottom up.
> Top Down is that you learn the barest possible tech.  dynamic languages,
> libraries for everything, no memory management etc etc etc.  This lets you
> start doing something fast... but you don't really know what you are doing.
>  But in many cases you don't really care.
> The second is bottom up where you learn how things work, then compose those
> things.
> 
> ex: You don't need to know how a hash table works to use a dict in python.
>  Of course you won't know when the right time to use one is, the
> performance characteristics, or how to implement a variant if you need one.
>  But if you first learn low level datastructures then you can use any
> library function you come across safely.
> 
> 
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