SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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: 2) by migz on Saturday November 05 2016, @09:03AM
Agree on the language. But not on the book. K&R is terrible if you have no grounding in programming, and it is getting very long in the tooth, and 2nd edition spends too much time being apologetic. If you are in a CompSci program with a year under your belt it's probably still a winner, but not as a first language. Have not found anything better for C though.
The idea that the book is more important than the language is very sound.
The old VIC-20 and C64 manuals took you from zero to hero, and they came in the box.
I have fond memories of The Java Tutorial, circa 2nd edition, but the latest version seems to have lost the touch and is far too technical and hung up on minutia.
As an aside, I miss the days when things that were written were edited.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday November 05 2016, @06:30PM
I didn't mention any particular C book. I don't have any one in mind. The introductory text should be a lot different from the reference book, which is all I've needed over the last few decades, so I'm not longer a good judge of the introductory text, but one might consider "Programming in C by Kochan".
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by migz on Saturday November 05 2016, @08:09PM
FYI
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_C_Programming_Language [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday November 05 2016, @11:12PM
Ah, I forgot. But when I tried to use just C as the subject, the comment got bounced for too short a subject. I wasn't referring to the book, which isn't good for the current version of C anyway. (Well, I think that the current standard still covers everything they talked about, but there are some significant changes.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.