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10-11-2013, 05:28 PM
In my opinion, fairly easy languages to learn are:
Python is very powerful, yet has a very easy syntax and simple set of keywords that allows you to get started really fast and make simply programs run with minimal learning effort.
Also there are quite a few of libraries that are specifically made to help people learn programming in Python (like Turtle, I think that was its name).
Plus, Python code almost always looks really clean.
As for Javascript, it's really super simple to get started with, and when you play around with browser APIs and combine it with HTML, you can make really easy and simple programs, that may actually be useful beyond a simple hello world.
Some caution may be needed though, because just like PHP (see below) it has many pits to fall into, but generally it's really a great things to get into, especially with the wide adoption of HTML5 and things like NodeJS (beware the callback pyramide of death, though :P).
PHP is also very easy, and combined with HTML can yield very quick results and as such provides for a very good learning curve. The downside is that PHP, if looked at in detail, is a really big mess. PHP was designed to "just work" and be easy to learn, and as such will do weird things in many situations, trying "to do what you meant". Many people would probably consider this a feature, but there are really quite a few of those not so obvious features, that will make your code work, but possibly doing the wrong thing without you noticing.
This may be personal preference, but I simply prefer a tool that dies while testing, rather than subtly doing the wrong thing. It's also very hard (I've really spent days hunting such "bugs" down in my code at work, that in the end turned out to be very poorly documented and unintuitive features) to actually write code that either purposefully includes or works around these language features.
Nonetheless, I think PHP is a good thing to start learning with, but in my opinion you shouldn't waste much time working through all the tiny gotchas, when you can just as well learn a language that was properly designed (PHP was just made, not really designed, in my opinion) by people who are into programming language design.
Both PHP and Javascript will allow you to write really ugly code. Both in looks and functionality. Good for quick & dirty projects, but hard to manage on larger scales (I think the Facebook dev blogs should have many examples of how they deal with those issues, e.g. HipHop to name one, and also why none of their backend systems actually use PHP).
In my very personal opinion, if you want to know a really great high level programming language, you should have a look at Google Go. It may not be easy to learn, if you are just getting into programming, but the syntax is very easy and concise and you can get things done really fast, while also writing clean and maintainable code. In that aspect, I think, it's far superior to many other languages and the ecosystem around it is rapidly growing and very easy to get into.
-- Ligustah
EDIT:
Also, if you ever want to do programming for a living, you will almost certainly have to learn C++ and Java at some point, but in my opinion neither of those serves as a good example of a well designed language.
- Python
- Javascript
- PHP
Python is very powerful, yet has a very easy syntax and simple set of keywords that allows you to get started really fast and make simply programs run with minimal learning effort.
Also there are quite a few of libraries that are specifically made to help people learn programming in Python (like Turtle, I think that was its name).
Plus, Python code almost always looks really clean.
As for Javascript, it's really super simple to get started with, and when you play around with browser APIs and combine it with HTML, you can make really easy and simple programs, that may actually be useful beyond a simple hello world.
Some caution may be needed though, because just like PHP (see below) it has many pits to fall into, but generally it's really a great things to get into, especially with the wide adoption of HTML5 and things like NodeJS (beware the callback pyramide of death, though :P).
PHP is also very easy, and combined with HTML can yield very quick results and as such provides for a very good learning curve. The downside is that PHP, if looked at in detail, is a really big mess. PHP was designed to "just work" and be easy to learn, and as such will do weird things in many situations, trying "to do what you meant". Many people would probably consider this a feature, but there are really quite a few of those not so obvious features, that will make your code work, but possibly doing the wrong thing without you noticing.
This may be personal preference, but I simply prefer a tool that dies while testing, rather than subtly doing the wrong thing. It's also very hard (I've really spent days hunting such "bugs" down in my code at work, that in the end turned out to be very poorly documented and unintuitive features) to actually write code that either purposefully includes or works around these language features.
Nonetheless, I think PHP is a good thing to start learning with, but in my opinion you shouldn't waste much time working through all the tiny gotchas, when you can just as well learn a language that was properly designed (PHP was just made, not really designed, in my opinion) by people who are into programming language design.
Both PHP and Javascript will allow you to write really ugly code. Both in looks and functionality. Good for quick & dirty projects, but hard to manage on larger scales (I think the Facebook dev blogs should have many examples of how they deal with those issues, e.g. HipHop to name one, and also why none of their backend systems actually use PHP).
In my very personal opinion, if you want to know a really great high level programming language, you should have a look at Google Go. It may not be easy to learn, if you are just getting into programming, but the syntax is very easy and concise and you can get things done really fast, while also writing clean and maintainable code. In that aspect, I think, it's far superior to many other languages and the ecosystem around it is rapidly growing and very easy to get into.
-- Ligustah
EDIT:
Also, if you ever want to do programming for a living, you will almost certainly have to learn C++ and Java at some point, but in my opinion neither of those serves as a good example of a well designed language.
I'm quite busy, so unless it's a quick thing or really urgent I am unlikely to be able to answer PMs throughout the week, but I try to reach out to everyone who contacted me during the weekends. If it's urgent, you can also contact any of the supremes, they can do a lot of things or relay directly to me if necessary.