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We've had this question asked before I believe but it does no harm in asking it again and again. After all, opinions change as does the software ecosystem. Quincy Larson of FreeCodeCamp.com asked this question via Medium: What programming language should you learn first? He thinks JavaScript is the way to go and his arguments are cogent and well thought out. However, I am somewhat hesitant to suggest someone learn to code in JavaScript first. My first programming language (in 1981!) was Fortran on a Control Data mainframe. The interactive environment the OS provided was pretty simple and the language provided few opportunities to hang yourself. JavaScript, by comparison, while it may not have those evil pointers of C/C++, it offers functional features and plenty of rope to hang oneself.
So, opinions please.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 04 2016, @07:37PM
JavaScript is the accessible language for beginners, because it is ubiquitous. Every browser runs JavaScript, and every desktop browser includes a JavaScript debugger.
(Idiot rebuttal: but, JS is bad! Bad stuff is bad stuff! NoScript! NoScript! NoooooScriiiiipt! No! Script! No! Script!)
My first programming language (in 1981!) was Fortran on a Control Data mainframe.
Holy fuck, check your privilege. In 1981, novice programmers were lucky enough to use Applesoft Basic on an Apple II, not Fortran on a goddamn mainframe.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 04 2016, @08:09PM
JavaScript is the accessible language for beginners, because it is ubiquitous. Every browser runs JavaScript, and every desktop browser includes a JavaScript debugger.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by mendax on Friday November 04 2016, @08:23PM
It helps when one's father is a university professor and had an account on the school's mainframe.
And actually you are incorrect about novice programmers being lucky enough to use Applesoft Basic on an Apple II. Most people then learned to code on mainframes or minicomputers, often requiring the program to be punched on cards. The desktop computer, while definitely making a big splash in the world, was a pretty pitiful programming platform. That mainframe I learned to program on was built in the late 1970's and one of the fastest computers in existence at the time.
It is we today, and the kids of the present day, who are very lucky. Fast, cheap computers are ubiquitous, high-quality open source operating systems and programming environments are widely available, and anyone who has the guts and gonads to master the intricacies of programming can learn how to do it with relative ease.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 05 2016, @01:11AM
It helps when one's father is a university professor and had an account on the school's mainframe.
[...] That mainframe I learned to program on was built in the late 1970's and one of the fastest computers in existence at the time.
And so you continue bragging about your privilege. You're an asshole.
(Score: 4, Informative) by t-3 on Saturday November 05 2016, @03:55AM
No, you're most definitely the asshole. Mendax was fortunate enough to have access to equipment many people didn't, and you tell him to feel bad about that. WTF kind of sense does that make? That's like some bum screaming at everyone with nice cars and jobs to "check their privelege" because he's unemployed and broke and it makes him feel bad to see other people doing well. Since when is jealousy something society has to appease?
(Score: 2) by moondoctor on Saturday November 05 2016, @12:03PM
Yep, my Mom's boyfriend was head of the math dept at local good university as a kid, got to play on a PDP-11 getting my feet wet.
The idea of starting out as a 9 year old with a terminal window open in my smartphone that is attached to a global network kinda blows my mind...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 04 2016, @09:34PM
I have a coworker who learned fortran in 1975 at his public high school, using an IBM mainframe.
At the time, a school with an on-site oil rig could keep the money from the oil.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday November 04 2016, @11:30PM
JavaScript is a language I used when teaching a "learn how to code a simple card game in a week" class and the younger students cried when they kept running into problems with case sensitivity and curly-braces.
The lesson learned is that having to code Javascript makes people cry, and I was only giving those youngsters a head-start on the real-world.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 05 2016, @08:13AM
I’d rather not imprint loose typing onto a newbie.
(Score: 2) by Sarasani on Saturday November 05 2016, @09:29AM
Want to get into JavaScript in 2016? Better read this first:
https://hackernoon.com/how-it-feels-to-learn-javascript-in-2016-d3a717dd577f [hackernoon.com]
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Saturday November 05 2016, @02:11PM
Holy fuck, check your privilege. In 1981, novice programmers were lucky enough to use Applesoft Basic on an Apple II, not Fortran on a goddamn mainframe.
Check your timeframes - this is entirely plausible. In 1970s and earlier there were no training wheels for programming, and everyone was a novice until getting into workplace or university with a computer, and then you'd go straight on to the big iron because that was all there was.
By mid 80's it's different: the home computer boom had almost been and gone, and most kids had access to computers in schools or at home, and most of those computers would have a BASIC interpreter, and kids were far more likely to actually use to them to learn some programming.
So I didn't consider myself a novice programmer when I started my first trainee programming job in mid 80s - I knew BASIC and a bit of assembly after all. I was dropped straight into large scale Vax FORTRAN and DCL. Shortly after I was finding and fixing a suspected compiler problem on large scale CORAL66 and project because one else there knew assembly, or was daft enough to say they did, of course I knew nothing about the target processor architecture or assembler either...
I also wasn't a novice when later I went to university and the first programming course was FORTRAN on a mainframe (ours was IBM though).
However, even by the late 80s, there were _some_ people I started work or university with who _were_ complete computer novices, and they still got put straight on Vaxen or mainframes just the same.