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Basic Programming for an utter novice.

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Calum:
I am an utter novice when it comes to anything involving typing stuff that a computer will then read and try to make sense of. I have dabbled for a long time, but i am still at the stage where i need to get in there, do the stuff, and get out quick in case i mess something up, and if i can follow a tutorial letter for letter, so much the better.
Where this is leading is, i want to expand my field of knowledge so that i am comfortable with all the things i might need in a possible future career in system admin/system upkeep/something to do with systems.
I will need to familiarise myself with different hardware (no bother) and learn about a variety of existing systems (i'm on it) and probably learn some programming languages and how to use them (uuuuuuhhhh... <stony silence>  ;)  
So what languages will i need to learn, to what degree, and how?
I went to The Codesters Siteand downloaded one of Bruce Eckel's books, he seems to get good reviews.
Also i found this Introduction to C++ by B. Kernighan, which looks like a good jump in point...

I am a bit out of my depth here though,
is it all as daunting as it seems?
do i have to learn Perl, C, Java et c et c, or are there one or two i should learn, and then pick and choose as i like?
How much do i actually have to learn anyway? i'm not planning on ever being a pioneer program developer (although maybe it would be good to have another string to the old bow   ;)   ) so do i need such a thorough knowledge of these languages?
i reckon i have a lot of good stuff on that Codesters site, but i always think it's worth asking you guys because when i ask a question here i tend to get a gem of an answer after a lot of fruitless searching around online (less fruitless thanks to Google) and i thought you guys could help me avoid any wrong turnings and dead ends i may be about to make...

thanks a lot in advance for any replies that may appear here!

[ March 28, 2002: Message edited by: Calum ]

voidmain:
It's not really important that you learn any one prior to any other, however, you can't go wrong by knowing cross platform languages such as C, C++, and Perl.  Perl would probably be the easiest starting point since it does not have to be compiled to run your code. It's not strongly typed, and it's easy to install and get started (it's likely already installed on your Linux box and you can download the Windows version from www.activestate.com).

[ March 28, 2002: Message edited by: VoidMain ]

badkarma:
Learning a programming language is quite easy when you know how to program.

When you are learning how to program however the language choice is quite important, some languages will teach you some bad habits.

I'd recommend learning c/c++, then most other programming languages are quite easy to learn (well, maybe except for assembler but I can't imagine you'd be interested in that). However I would recom mend to not spend too much time with C (just learn the basic syntax and write a few simple programs) and learn C++ because it will offer you a lot better tools to write cleaner code (and when you *ever* do *anything* remotely related to programming cleaner code is a must, and C has the tendency to sometimes be not so clean). Furthermore I don't think anybody has ever learned to program without looking at or toying with code from other people. A good exercise is to take a small simple program, heavily commented and study it, remove all the comments from the code and write the comments yourself.

When you think you have the basics covered and want some more in depth information the
C-faq and the C++-faq are unmissable sources.

good luck, and if you ever want to dabble with OpenGL game programming send me a PM  ;)

Centurian:
Hey,

Personally C/C++ code looks like a chicken walked around on my screen for about an hour. I would rather write 1000 lines of ASM code than write 50 lines of chicken track code to do the same job.
However C/C++ are highly cross-platform compatible. Further C/C++ is extremely powerful. (almost as powerful as ASM) so I would have to recommend it to anyone who is learning to program.

First I would suggest you learn Pascal. It is also cross-platform compatible and you can use inline ASM code if you wish. With Pascal you can learn all the principles of coding. It is quite fast and powerful. For Linux there is GPC (GNU Pascal Compiler) if you want to go that route.

But eventually you should learn C/C++ also. (shudders) Not knowing C/C++ would be a serious deterant to any serious programming career choice.

badkarma:

quote:Originally posted by Centurian:
Hey,

I would rather write 1000 lines of ASM code than write 50 lines of chicken track code to do the same job.
--- End quote ---


And I would rather maintain tens of thousands of lines C++ code (which probably isn't even written by myself) then the same program in assembler.

 

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