Other Software > Developer's Corner
The Best Introductory Language
ivanv:
I'm going to blasphem and say something like Visual Basic 6... Or any very high level language.
That's because for me, learning first about higher level stuff, being able to focus more on what I want the program to do, and not the nitty gritty of memory management (to mention just one difficult area), allows me to learn at my own pace.
I first learned QuickBasic, then Turbo Pascal, then Assembler, then a little C++. It was easy for me to understand ASM (even machine code) after Basic and Pascal, plus it helped me understand how those worked.
It could be the other way around I guess, but that's what worked best for me.
zridling:
What the hell's wrong with you people? Fortran's not good enough for you? I took the course in 1980 and I've never needed anything since!*
*I haven't used it since either. So stop smirking.
broken85:
I got started with Basic, followed immediately thereafter by Visual Basic 5 Learning Edition. That was quite enlightening, and really opened the door for all my future programming endeavors, from C++/VC++ to PHP to Java and C# and everything inbetween. It might not be the best place to start, but it seemed much less complex than any variation of C at the time and since I was a kid that was OK with me!
Rather than pick a specific language to start learning, I would recommend getting a free copy of Visual Studio 2005 Express Edition and having a look at some sample projects in the various languages, or trying out some simple tutorials in each of them, to figure out which one is easiest for you to wrap your head around. In the end most languages can do most things you want them to, but with extremely varied levels of ease and success. It's all about preference.
Last year I "watched" a couple of webcasts to get a free copy of Visual Studio 2005 Standard (was linked to from this forum) and I'm really glad I did, it has been my tool of choice ever since. Well, except for web programming because I have not found a good reason to take the plunge away from PHP yet (nor have I really been looking for one. I love PHP.)
nosh:
f0dder: What's a good place to start teaching yourself machine architecture if you're completely new to it? Any book/online tutorial recommendations?
BTW, tried out quite a few DC programs today and I loved fsekrit. Great work there!
f0dder:
Good question - I haven't found any single source that I liked, I've picked up from bits and pieces here and there. For x86, the resource has been the processor manuals from intel (PDFs as well as paperback prints freely available), but those are pretty dry and heavy.
Randall Hyde's "The art of assembly" is supposedly good, but I haven't read it - the old part is about 16bit which I've happily forgotten more about than most people of today will ever look at :), and the 32bit part is in his HLA syntax that I'm not too fond of (it's interesting because it's different, though). I've never taken a formal course in this stuff, so I don't have any references, sorry. Or well, I bought "Silberschatz/Galvin/Gagne: operating system concepts" which seems to be decent, but that's only part of it - more OS than machine architecture.
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