Blogger Carl Cheo, who maintains a website providing numbered lists of tips for maximizing online productivity, has pulled together an easy-to-follow graphic answering the newbie question "What programming language should I learn first?" (pdf here). Cheo chose nine commercially viable languages as possible destinations as the viewer navigates the flow chart. Further down the page, there are tabs with annotated links to educational resources for each language. So what's in it for Soylentils, most of whom I'm guessing were programming newbies in the previous millenium? Well, maybe you have nephews or nieces who chose the wrong major in college. Besides, the graphic is amusing and clever, though probably not the last word on the subject.
(Score: 2) by Marand on Sunday January 25 2015, @08:51AM
At least with an instructor, after the class is done you can adjust your style to your liking. In that way it's sort of like martial arts; while learning, you have to do what the teacher wants, but inevitably it gets changed to suit you, sometimes only slightly, sometimes greatly. It's harder to do that when the "my way or the highway" is baked in, which is what I don't like about Python. There's plenty to like about the language, but it just has this authoritarian feel to it in some ways that I don't care for and would find unappealing as a learning language.