I am thinking of teaching myself some computer programming and I was wondering what would be a good programming language to start off with. I plan on just buying myself a textbook and seeing how I go.
So what do all the forum programmers think I should start off with?
>>I plan on just buying myself a textbook and seeing how I go
You’re going to need a computer at some stage, Phil.
Peak Warming Man said:
>>I plan on just buying myself a textbook and seeing how I goYou’re going to need a computer at some stage, Phil.
Hah. Yes. You’re not far wrong as I’ll probably need to purchase a new laptop to see how this plays out.
Peak Warming Man said:
>>I plan on just buying myself a textbook and seeing how I goYou’re going to need a computer at some stage, Phil.
Computer programming unplugged.
This will start you off.
Visual Basic is as good as any to start with and you can compile it in Excel and othe Microsoft programmes.
But PM2Ring or Droppy and others will provide more advice on some of the newer ones around like Python.
Machine code. It’s the only way to really understand what’s going on. And it is easily the easiest as there’s only two instructions you have to remember.
sibeen said:
Machine code. It’s the only way to really understand what’s going on. And it is easily the easiest as there’s only two instructions you have to remember.
0 and 1? :-)
Michael V was telling me that this forum was written by a 14 year old kid in 3 hours.
Peak Warming Man said:
Michael V was telling me that this forum was written by a 14 year old kid in 3 hours.
He told me the same story once.
I think I’ve seen individual posts written the same way.
Depends what you are aiming for.
If you want to apply computer programming in some other field then there is a lot to be said for Excel + VBA.
If you want to be a specialist programmer then evening mentioning VBA is likely to be treated with scorn and derision.
That said, it’s still not a bad way to start, in my opinion, and you can always pick up other languages later, if that’s the way you want to go.
The Rev Dodgson said:
Depends what you are aiming for.If you want to apply computer programming in some other field then there is a lot to be said for Excel + VBA.
If you want to be a specialist programmer then evening mentioning VBA is likely to be treated with scorn and derision.
That said, it’s still not a bad way to start, in my opinion, and you can always pick up other languages later, if that’s the way you want to go.
At the moment this will just be a hobby so as yet I have no idea what I could use the knowledge for.
Phil_C said:
The Rev Dodgson said:
Depends what you are aiming for.If you want to apply computer programming in some other field then there is a lot to be said for Excel + VBA.
If you want to be a specialist programmer then evening mentioning VBA is likely to be treated with scorn and derision.
That said, it’s still not a bad way to start, in my opinion, and you can always pick up other languages later, if that’s the way you want to go.
At the moment this will just be a hobby so as yet I have no idea what I could use the knowledge for.
Use it for good.
You’ll probably want to see some results of what you’re doing, so try
codecademy.com
and pick a language
Python isn’t bad, and there are multiple forumers that know how to use it, unlike, um, machine code, which is just 01101110 01101111
Vivid orange sunset this end. Must be them dang volcaners.
Bubblecar said:
Vivid orange sunset this end. Must be them dang volcaners.
That was fer chat.
poikilotherm said:
unlike, um, machine code, which is just 01101110 01101111
Don’t tell me to piss off ever again!
sibeen said:
Don’t tell me to piss off ever again!
One of us must be rusty as hell, old fella, because I read that as an invitation to a night out on the piss.
:-)
sibeen said:
poikilotherm said:
unlike, um, machine code, which is just 01101110 01101111
Don’t tell me to piss off ever again!
01110000 01101001 01110011 01110011 00100000 01101111 01100110 01100110 00101100 00100000 01110011 01101001 01100010 01100101 01100101 01101110
Divine Angel said:
sibeen said:
poikilotherm said:
unlike, um, machine code, which is just 01101110 01101111
Don’t tell me to piss off ever again!
01110000 01101001 01110011 01110011 00100000 01101111 01100110 01100110 00101100 00100000 01110011 01101001 01100010 01100101 01100101 01101110
I had no idea you were such a cunning linguist DA!
I had some help from el Google-o.
01001111011010000010000001100011011011110110110101100101001000000110111101101110001011000010000001101100011001010111010000100111011100110010000001101000011000010111011001100101001000000110000100100000011011100110100101100111011010000111010000100000011011110110111000100000011101000110100001100101001000000111000001101001011100110111001100100001
http://scratch.mit.edu/
It reminds me of LOGO.
Except fun.
if you live in a major city you should be able to take a course, anywhere else not so much
face to face tuition has benefits as the person teaching should be able to give you tips and tricks that are relevant (see who is any good)
wading through lots of irrelevant stuff will just deter you
failing that try a dedicated forum for this kind of thing – they might well give you far more useful and specific advice
/* 01001111011010000010000001100011011011110110110101100101001000000110111101101110001011000010000001101100011001010111010000100111011100110010000001101000011000010111011001100101001000000110000100100000011011100110100101100111011010000111010000100000011011110110111000100000011101000110100001100101001000000111000001101001011100110111001100100001 */
V\\VVWW\\W/\\W\\V/V\VWW\VWWVV/\/\W\\VWVVVW/WV/V\VWVVV/\WV/V\VW\VVWWVVW/WVW/VVWVVVW/WV/V\\W\\V/\\V/\WVW//V/V\VW//VW\/VW//VW/\\W\\VW\VVWV/VW\VVWWVVW/W\W/\\W\\VW/\VW//V/VWVWVV\W\\VWWVV/V\\W/W
Visual Basic.NET
javascript
Dropbear said:
Visual Basic.NET
Thanks Dropbear.
ATM I am tossing up between VB, C++ and Java. It might depend on how much I like a particular textbook.
SCIENCE said:
javascript
I see there is a difference between Java and Javascript.
// I see there is a difference between Java and Javascript.
Yes.
Javascript interpreters are quite tolerant and will let you write code in a very quick and dirty way.
The advantage is that embedded in a suitable HTML page, almost every browser in use today will run it without requiring additional stuff.
> I am tossing up between VB, C++ and Java. It might depend on how much I like a particular textbook.
Good sensible choices, and a good comment. I have at various times needed to know a bit of all three.
I don’t think I have any textbooks on VB here. I don’t know any good ones.
I taught myself C using Kernighan and Ritchie “The C programming language”. That’s an excellent book, you can find it in any university library or pick it up second hand. That’s C rather than C++ and if I need C++ I just modify what I’ve written in C a bit. The other book on C/C++ that I’ve found very useful is Numerical Recipes The latest edition of that uses C++ by default. I have another big textbook on C++ that I won’t mention because I never use it.
I taught myself Java using “Teach yourself Java 1.1 in 21 days”. It took me about 21 days. That should only be treated as the tip of the iceberg because professional Java programmers also use APIs such as “JavaBeans Activation Framework” that I have no wish to learn. I have another Java textbook that I again won’t mention because I never found it useful.
As for which of the three, well, VB is good for writing small programs and it interfaces seamlessly with Microsoft Excel. C++ is great for compute-intensive jobs – it’s very fast – and on the other end is used for programming microprocessors. Java is one of the languages used for web applications – not necessarily the best language for web applications but better for that than C++ and VB.
All three can be learnt using online tutorials, but I don’t know the best websites for these.
Thanks Mollwollfumble.
SCIENCE said:
‘e recommends javascript too
Maybe. :)
I quite like JavaScript, when it’s not abused. But I love Python more. :)
I’d certainly recommend JavaScript if you just want to write smallish programs that need a nice user interface that’s relatively simple to make. There are tons of JavaScript tutorials & examples online to learn from. OTOH, there’s also a ton of bad JavaScript code on the Net that can lead beginners into bad habits.
But yeah, if you know some HTML (and a bit of CSS) nothing can beat JavaScript for ease of creating a program with a good looking user interface that most people will have no problems using. And the JavaScript engines of modern browsers are very fast.
…
Of course, if you want to do huge amounts of number crunching at the highest speed that you can, then you’ll need to use a compiled language, which in this day & age probably means C++.
But Python is a hell of a lot easier to learn & to use than full-blown C++. Although, TBH, most C++ users aren’t expert in all the features of the full language, they just learn what they need to know and get on with it.
And for many applications, Python’s not that much slower than C/C++ if you use it properly – you can often organise your program so that the heavy duty processing is handed off to a library function that runs at high speed because it was actually written in C.
…
I guess this a bit analogous to using VB + Excel, VB handles the housekeeping chores & Excel does all the heavy lifting. If you’re familiar with Excel, and you can conceptualise the tasks you want to perform in an Excel-oriented way, then VB + Excel may be a good way to go.
…
If you’d like to write apps for mobile phones & tablets, then you probably should learn Java, as that’s the standard for those platforms. It is possible to run other interpreted languages on them these days, but it’s generally not as straightforward as running Java apps. OTOH, phones & tablets have Web browsers, so you can run JavaScript if you don’t mind running it in a browser.
Thanks for all that PM.
The choice is simple, either Visual Basic .NET or C#
Morning…about time NSW won. I can gloat at work now (not that I care, but the boss is right into it and from qld…). I take it our soccer team lost again as expected?
Sorry.
diddly-squat said:
The choice is simple, either Visual Basic .NET or C#
I disagree.
For speed of development you can’t beat an interpreted language with a convenient numerical and graphical interface, and Excel + VBA is in my opinion the best example of that.
For the rare occasions when VBA is too slow C++ is significantly faster than C#, and they have about equal difficulty in linking to Excel, but for the best of both worlds linking to Python via VBA has a lot going for it.
PM 2Ring said:
I guess this a bit analogous to using VB + Excel, VB handles the housekeeping chores & Excel does all the heavy lifting. If you’re familiar with Excel, and you can conceptualise the tasks you want to perform in an Excel-oriented way, then VB + Excel may be a good way to go.
I disagree with that as well. VBA is often faster than using the built-in Excel function, and if you want to do some heavy numerical work like solving a large system of linear equations you need to link to an external library anyway (and there I agree that Python can be almost as fast as C or Fortran, and a lot easier to use).
The big advantages I see for the Excel+VBA route are:
1) You don’t have to worry about programming the interface, Excel is already an excellent interface for inputting and organising numerical data, and is OK for graphics and text as well.
2) The clincher for me, you can set up a simple prototype of whatever you want to do on the spreadsheet, using little or no VBA, then convert it into a VBA routine to make it more flexible, powerful and robust.
Excel+VBA does have a couple of disadvantages:
1) The security is rubbish (may be improved in the latest version, not sure).
2) VBA has a big image problem, being seen as a “toy” programming language by many people, most of whom know nothing about it.
But if you are not worried about people seeing your code, and you are not aiming for a career as a professional programmer, it seems to me by far the easiest way to get really useful computer applications up and running quickly, with the minimum of hassle.
> For speed of development you can’t beat an interpreted language with a convenient numerical and graphical interface
I tend to disagree. If I want fast development then I use Fortran. What can be done in 3 lines in Fortran takes 10 or more lines in professionally written C++ (because of the need to define everything twice and the object orientation), 20 or more lines in VB (because of the buggering around with the user interface), and a professional Java programmer would require about 200 lines plus multiple APIs.
mollwollfumble said:
> For speed of development you can’t beat an interpreted language with a convenient numerical and graphical interfaceI tend to disagree. If I want fast development then I use Fortran. What can be done in 3 lines in Fortran takes 10 or more lines in professionally written C++ (because of the need to define everything twice and the object orientation), 20 or more lines in VB (because of the buggering around with the user interface), and a professional Java programmer would require about 200 lines plus multiple APIs.
In a typical application I write the buggering around with the user interface would consist of:
either Set DataRange = Range(“named_range”)
if I want to use an Excel range, or more likely if I want to convert it into an array:
DataArray = Range(“named_range”),Value2
I don’t see how it would be any easier in Fortran, or anything else.
The Rev Dodgson said:
PM 2Ring said:I guess this a bit analogous to using VB + Excel, VB handles the housekeeping chores & Excel does all the heavy lifting. If you’re familiar with Excel, and you can conceptualise the tasks you want to perform in an Excel-oriented way, then VB + Excel may be a good way to go.
I disagree with that as well. VBA is often faster than using the built-in Excel function, and if you want to do some heavy numerical work like solving a large system of linear equations you need to link to an external library anyway (and there I agree that Python can be almost as fast as C or Fortran, and a lot easier to use).
The big advantages I see for the Excel+VBA route are:
1) You don’t have to worry about programming the interface, Excel is already an excellent interface for inputting and organising numerical data, and is OK for graphics and text as well.
2) The clincher for me, you can set up a simple prototype of whatever you want to do on the spreadsheet, using little or no VBA, then convert it into a VBA routine to make it more flexible, powerful and robust.
Excel+VBA does have a couple of disadvantages:
1) The security is rubbish (may be improved in the latest version, not sure).
2) VBA has a big image problem, being seen as a “toy” programming language by many people, most of whom know nothing about it.But if you are not worried about people seeing your code, and you are not aiming for a career as a professional programmer, it seems to me by far the easiest way to get really useful computer applications up and running quickly, with the minimum of hassle.
obviously the key here is the underlying application that the user is trying to achive. If you are happ using Excel as the front end the VBA is a great tool, but if you want to create your own excitable applications then VB .NET or C# is the go.
I love excitable applications
Dropbear said:
I love excitable applications
or executable even…
8/
diddly-squat said:
obviously the key here is the underlying application that the user is trying to achive. If you are happ using Excel as the front end the VBA is a great tool, but if you want to create your own excitable applications then VB .NET or C# is the go.
Yes, I agree with that, if you want an excitable that doesn’t look like Excel, then trying to do it in Excel probably isn’t the best idea!.
But even then, a prototype in Excel might well be worthwhile.
How VB.NET and C# compare with Python and other alternatives for interface creation, I don’t know.
The Rev Dodgson said:
mollwollfumble said:
20 or more lines in VB (because of the buggering around with the user interface)
In a typical application I write the buggering around with the user interface would consist of …
Every standalone VB application starts with defining the positions and sizes of input and output windows.
Simple example:
In Fortran the following line is a complete program in itself.
In VB we’re looking at:
Private Sub cmdClear_Click()
picOutput.Cls
End Sub
Private Sub cmdShow1_Click()
picOutput.Print “Hello World !”
End Sub
Private Sub cmdShow2_Click()
picOutput.Print “Welcome to Visual Basic !”
End Sub
Oops, that VB program should have been 11 lines long.
Private Sub cmdClear_Click()
picOutput.Cls
End Sub
Private Sub cmdShow1_Click()
picOutput.Print “Hello World !”
End Sub
Private Sub cmdShow2_Click()
picOutput.Print “Welcome to Visual Basic !”
End Sub
> Oops, that VB program should have been 11 lines long.
The forum is still mucking up the formatting.
A typical hello world program in C++ is 7 lines
#include <iostream>
int main()
{
std::cout << “Hello world. Welcome to C++” << std::endl;
return 0;
}
In Java, a a Hello World program tends to look like:
import javax.swing.JFrame; //Importing class JFrame
import javax.swing.JLabel; //Importing class JLabel
public class HelloWorld {
public static void main(String args) {
JFrame frame = new JFrame(); //Creating frame
frame.setTitle(“Hi!”); //Setting title frame
frame.add(new JLabel(“Hello world. Welcome to Java”));//Adding text to frame
frame.pack(); //Setting size to smallest
frame.setLocationRelativeTo(null); //Centering frame
frame.setVisible(true); //Showing frame
}
}
> In Java, a a Hello World program tends to look like:
That was supposed to be 12 lines.
For a quick and dirty introduction to about 100 different computer programming languages see:
This is a more dispassionate set of examples of Hello World programs in 300 programming languages – they’ve aimed at conciseness in every example.
A comparison the use of a loop in popular computer languages for printing out 500 lines of I will not throw paper airplanes in class.
A good comparison of how many programming languages handle Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs).
A good comparison of how many programming languages handle Web servers
mollwollfumble said:
The Rev Dodgson said:
mollwollfumble said:
20 or more lines in VB (because of the buggering around with the user interface)
In a typical application I write the buggering around with the user interface would consist of …
Every standalone VB application starts with defining the positions and sizes of input and output windows.
Simple example:
print*, “Hello World, welcome to Fortran”
In Fortran the following line is a complete program in itself.In VB we’re looking at:
Private Sub cmdClear_Click() picOutput.Cls
End Sub
Private Sub cmdShow1_Click() picOutput.Print “Hello World !”
End Sub
Private Sub cmdShow2_Click() picOutput.Print “Welcome to Visual Basic !”
End Sub
Well yes, that’s the advantage of doing your programming inside a powerful user interface found on almost every computer, rather than having to write your own.
mollwollfumble said:
This is a more dispassionate set of examples of Hello World programs in 300 programming languages – they’ve aimed at conciseness in every example.A comparison the use of a loop in popular computer languages for printing out 500 lines of I will not throw paper airplanes in class.
A good comparison of how many programming languages handle Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs).
A good comparison of how many programming languages handle Web servers
I really don’t think that these sorts of examples really tell us much about how easy they are to program, although I note that in the list of loop programs the Excel example was the shortest, and VBA is amongst the shortest for the “Hello World” programs.
They didn’t list the program for generating a Hello World message in Excel though. Here it is:
Hello World
And if the previous example was not programmatic enough, here it is in VBA:
Function HW()
HW = “Hello World”
Exit Function
Thanks for all your advice.