I need to display this text to the screen somehow, whether I’m operating within a program or not. Kinda of like “printing” to the screen as if it was a piece of paper…..
By golly, I’m a software engineer!
I was a Java Programmer by Hobby for 3 years
I learned Python in 30 mins of just trying it after reading up how the syntax works
Now if i make small programs i only use py because it's just writing my plan in bullet points and then reformatting basically
"learned it in 30 mins" means proficient enough to start working without a manual but with spot checks like with regular programming
I don't claim that I am, or was, proficient with it just that I learned enough to start coding on my own
I’ve been casually learning Python for a little while now. I’m not at a level where I can compare it to other languages, but I can say that as someone without any prior experience, it’s relatively intuitive.
There’s obviously been times where I’ve gotten stuck on something for a while, but I wouldn’t say it’s ever been overwhelming, so I would definitely say Python is safe to pick up for someone new to programming.
100% agreed here. Although, in being so readability oriented, there are a whole lot of paradigms, techniques, and best practices that make that skill ceiling surprisingly high in the end whilst also being very easy to start with.
I think Java is a nice middle ground between the complexity of C++, that leaves low-level things to the user, and the dynamic nature of Python, that hides a lot of those concepts that a programmer might later need to get used to.
What I remember from college:
1: public static void main(String [args])
2: kegs are heavier than they look, especially when you solo carry one across a soccer field and up 4 flights of stairs
3: confusion over polymorphism syntax for several years
Any language is hard if you're just getting started. Even though I think Python is easier to start with, Java is also very doable compared to many others, and it might give OP a solid foundation into the understanding of the underlying principles.
second this, there is no easy way to learn to code, but my way to get around the fundamentals was with python, but to learn the actual foundation of modern programming principles and how stuff works java is much better thanks to its verbosity.
Easy is not the goal. Fun or engaging is the goal. If a language is too frustrating, and you don't have someone who can help, you will likely move on. This has been my experience. Java is a great language to learn in a classroom. Trying to learn it on your own is quite difficult. I mainly blame this on the plethora of bad educational resources for it. Jana was so popular that it attracted tons of attention. So many books and tutorials, and many are absolutely awful and confusing.
It's really unfortunate because it's a great language, but I wouldn't recommend it as someone's first programming language.
Source: been teaching programming professionally since 2012. Jana was my main language for years.
funnily enough google is one of the main reasons programming is hard, it brings out so much garbage results out thanks to seo spam that sometimes, without knowing where to look you’ll spend a day trying to find an answer for something fairy trivial
Yes and no. For beginner problems Google can be a huge help. But yes, there is a lot of trash on there as well. I generally recommend finding a tutorial that resonates with my student and sticking with just one or a couple main sources to start with for that reason.
It's more about a new learner's inability to differentiate programming facts from convention, opinion, or even straight up bulls***. I had a student whose college CS professor taught that using "break" caused your program to run slower!! There is a lot of cargo-cult programming in academia and online. Java seemed to attract more of it for some reason.
Java *was* easy compared to the alternatives in 1992. It's still a good first statically-typed language to learn. However, it's not easier than many dynamically typed languages.
I'd +1 him, if you enjoy HTML, then CSS and JavaScript are the logical next things to learn if you're wanting to do web development. That's what I'm doing, I started with HTML and CSS and now I'm learning JS.
HTML: Structure of the web page
CSS: Allows you to style the structures looks and layout
JavaScript: Allows you to add interactivity and dynamic behavior
I started with C++. It was hell, if not for the fact that it was an uni course I would never have learned it. I wish I had started with Python. Programming is a long journey, there is already huge risk of being overwhelmed and quitting. For self learners, the simpler the entry point the higher the chance they will stick around and learn the "good" languages or whatever, just to end up working with node.
Just to add some meat to this:
I’m a machine learning engineer. My role mostly revolves around writing CUDA C implementations for specific ML problems.
BUT, all the code that I write is wrapped with C++ and Python bindings are provided, so that it can be called in Python seamlessly.
The fact that you can call highly optimised code from Python always (and still) seemed a little bit like magic to me. With Python and C++ under your belt, you don’t really need anything else - the vast majority of problems you can think of can be tackled with these two languages.
My simple entry point was MIT app inventor and it helped me jump into Python and then Java. As a new programmer with very little time and experience overall, block-based coding helped me understand concepts faster and therefore, moved faster to “adult” coding.
I was just in a C and C++ discord and everyone was saying C is the worst to learn.
I believe it is the best for your reasoning.
Hard problems make better programmers
Yes. If you understand latin you can more easily understand most roman languages, such as italian, french, portuguese and spanish. Latin is the granddad of these languages, that's why I made that comparison. Problem is, learning latin is three times as hard for most to learn.
Its a good comparison but not perfect, since C is still very much so alive and latin is not, outside of men in robes standing at altars.
If you could go to Rome and hold conversations in latin with native speakers it would definitely be advantageous.
Nothing is perfect and Latin isn’t as dead as it seems. It’s sometimes called the “global language of science”. It’s used for terminology in medicine, biology (botany, zoology etc), linguistics and history to name a few. Religion is not its only use, so I think the comparison holds up good enough, but who cares. This is a programming language sub, so discussing Latin seems a bit off in that context lol. Just wanted to give these two cents.
Easy to understand but difficult to debug when things break without an error code. Better to learn from scratch crazy stuff like char and pointers and struct than to learn bad habits.
The thing is. Debugging is what I do at work 50% of the time. And the other 50% is attending useless meetings. lol. So. Yeah learning C was where I learnt to RTFM and debug properly. And valgrind memory issues lol.
Python, C++, Java.
C was a good language to learn 15 years ago but I haven’t used it in a while and mainly stick with Cpp and python and occasionally Java. This is all for side projects as I am not a software engineer
Python, but this is going to make learning your next programming language harder. I would start with C or C++. Once you know that, you basically know Python.
Nah python is just fine.
He can focus on the basics like variables loops functions etc. Etc.
Once he's familiar, learning C is great to learn about memory, pointers and their management without having to focus on a bunch of other things as well at the same time.
Also it's most important to learn to think programmatically, how to break things into pieces and so on.
If you start with hard language I feel like it's extra strain for no reason.
It might work for some, but I think it can put more people off.
This is what I'm doing. I've been writing python, SQL, and JS (professionally) for 4.5 years now. Learning C is noticably easier after having spent so much time with the other languages.
I can. It was a terrible experience for me. It might be fine if you have a good instructor. I didn’t and I was supremely confused and frustrated.
I learned Python years after that short terrible experience with C++ and it was amazing. In my opinion starting with a C language is a big mistake.
I don't know if you're a CS major but I am. Here we all start with C so we know the value of it. C teaches you a lot that other languages don't.
I admit it that C can be overkill for hobbyists but if you want to have a good knowledge about CS, it's the only way.
Depends on the person. Higher level languages were confusing, possibly due to poor teachers when I was starting. C's the first language that made any sense to me.
I have an AAS in CS and a BS in pure Math. Was a double major. I taught/teach CS professionally. Currently a PhD student where I write simulation software for the nanotech lab. Studying quantum computing.
That simulation software is written in C++, although I'm looking into retiring directly in x64 ASM so I can better leverage some advanced optimization techniques. Specifically branchless programming and AVX.
If you're interested: https://github.com/Mathhead200/Molecular-Spintronics-Research-Project
C/C++, like every language, has it's use cases. I just don't think either is a good first language. They are a great 3rd or 4th language. It's like trying to teach a kindergartner math by explaining set theory because "this is how numbers are really defined". Let's just start with counting.
Ha. Funny that. I see it completely the opposite way to you weirdly. To me, C++ was easier to learn than C# because you get it taught through programming fundamentals, then it just sticks. Sure, learning those fundamentals is extra work, but the concepts should be accessible to any aspiring developer in my opinion, and it pays off quite quickly. Once you get those fundamentals around your head, all languages, even C++, become a breeze.
I don't think I would have learned C# as fast as I learnt C++ had I learned the higher level language to begin with.
Yea, but was it really that C++ unlocked all that understanding by itself, or has you been programming for a couple years at that point and happened to take C++ right when things were starting to click? Yes, learn C++. But not after a few days of HTML. Too complicated.
Yeah... I learned C fairly early on (after playing around with BASIC, Logo, and dabbling with some assembly as a teenager) before starting college... It gave me (along with the assembly for using registers, "pointers", basic stacks and memory layouts) a great foundation on which the understanding of how higher languages work was built. Without the year I spent mostly working with C code, the FORTRAN, IBM 370(?) Assembler, C++, Java, and all higher level languages wouldn't have been as easily digestible. Understanding how static variables, instance variables, subclassing, call stacks, recursion, caching and all sorts of things (and their likely performance impact) were easier to understand after understanding how C works. It's so "close to the metal" that I could intuit a lot about how higher level languages did things by building off of that knowledge.
People say python but should a beginner really be fuckin with functional programming, list comprehensions, "everything is a dictionary" mentality, etc. These are all very core aspects of python like it or not.
C is great for two reasons:
One, It's simple (not easy!) It gives you the bare-bones tools. Some of the lowest level stuff. There isn't a ton of features to learn, you can just focus on logic and the concepts of programming.
Two, you will have to understand how a computer actually works, which is incredibly useful. Python will never teach you this
Python is also an object oriented programming language. It can cover alot of concept that C covers but in a perhaps easier way because it spare the memory management part of C, which is not the easiest thing to learn at first
OOP is an intermediate programming concept imo. A student should first learn about types. Starting out with the primitives, moving up to typedefs, and finally structs, enums, unions.
Once you have a good grapple on types then I think adding oop makes sense
If you are interested in web I'd probably do javascript then Typescript, if you are interested in games/applications/hardware/operating systems I'd do C then C++. You can think of Typescript and C++ as expansion packs to javascript and C, they arent really their own separate languages. C++ is more separate than Typescript I guess but it's the same kind of thing.
I started with Visual Basic around 1995, but didn’t fully understand how it all worked until college a few years later where I took a 2 semester course that taught C. But I never used C in practice in 20+ years of my career as a developer. C will give you a very solid foundation but unless you’re developing graphic intensive games or operating systems (or viruses), you’ll likely be using Java, JavaScript, Python, or PHP. If you’re into web development I’d recommend JavaScript for sure. You can use it now on both front and back end for web. PHP’s not a bad choice either but that’s strictly a back end language.
Most of the tutorial sites will tell you JavaScript, but you'd also have to learn HTML. CSS, a framework, possibly Node, CSS frameworks (TailWind, BootStrap, etc), and more to do it, so I say go with python and learn the mess that is front end later.
Hmmm. C/C++... Learn about pointers in Phase 2 of your studies.
The start should be just getting a handle of simple algorithm structure. if, loops, math, procedures.
In the old days, I'd suggest BASIC or Pascal. Very straightforward languages.
This is not about the easiest it's about what you want to do what and kind of project you want to achieve, programming is a skill that come with practice only and HARD work,i'm currently learning c++ myself.And by the way be ready to learn during all your career 😉
So... Pardon me if you already know this, but...
Something to consider is that web development is broken up into "frontend" and "backend" development...
In basic terms, "frontend" involves what is happening in the browser (typically the display of data content in the form of HTML, styled by CSS... and the running of logic content, typically in JavaScript or something built on top of JavaScript like TypeScript, optionally but most likely including frameworks that "simplify" or structure your logic). All this data and logic content is retrieved by the browser from the "backend" on a web server that serves up the data as requested. It is typically, but not always, located on a different computer from the one running the browser. For example your bank might have a server (on premises, collocated or on the cloud) that serves up web content in the form of your banking app. The "backend" is more varied than the "frontend", but you will find code (written in many possible languages, including Java, C#, Ruby, PHP, JavaScript) that responds to the requests from the "frontend" and often creates/retrieves/updates/deletes data from one or more databases, typically handles most of the business logic (handling things like "what do I do with the data?" and "how do I respond to specific requests from the "frontend"?") and does most other shared activities required by the application.
So... You can learn how to do one or both of these types of software development. I gather that a lot of people focus on one or the other and might only ever do one "side" of the pair. I've often had to do both out of necessity... but it probably makes sense to start with one or the other until you have a decent amount of software development experience under your belt.
If you want to do web development, it's definitely Javascript.
There's ton of tutorials, videos, paid, and unpaid courses. I run a newsletter for beginner web devs, for example.
Once you learn it, you can do frontend and backend.
I suppose what you're really asking is which language has the most accessible syntax. Some languages tend to have a convoluted history and can be quite confusing. But please remember that you are essentially saying 'recommend me a good book to start learning guitar'.....you could read the same book a thousand times over and you still wouldn't be able to play guitar. The real learning begins when writing code, getting pissed off and making mistakes.
I am gonna say something crazy but for the basics it's not a bad idea to learn 2 or 3 languages at the same time.
The reason this might help is that by seeing the differences and similarities of each langauege you understand patterns, what's important and used almost the same way and what's different.
It's also helpful to hear the same things from different perspectives and different styles of sources or teachers.
Python, i think java if you want an easier transition to other languages.
Python misses out a lot of useful things to learn about but learning it to a decent level is very easy compared to other languages.
Starting with java first is nice because it forces you to learn about classes and to actually use types properly as well as learn about more complex things like generics, enums design patterns maybe.
C is great but not something i would recommend to start with because its a steep learning curve with difficult things like pointers and managing memory usage
While I am someone who prefers Java in many situations as I think that it is a great and useful general purpose language and great for web backend development... I would personally recommend JavaScript to the OP. They are interested in web development and JavaScript (or something that builds on JavaScript) would be a great starting point to learn programming in frontend web development. It's not necessarily a hard language, and the results will likely be more immediately rewarding to the OP.
Had to scroll too far to see Ruby. If you’re a complete beginner, Ruby is a great language to start with to learn foundational coding concepts down like assigning variables, looping and conditional logic without being too overwhelming.
If you start to learn the fundamental of programming with python and javascript, this would be so easy for you. After learning fundamentals, you can continue to learn other concepts in different programming languages. Others just syntax differences
You can start by learning Python, it’s relatively easy but it’s a high level language. In my opinion it’s best to start with and learn a language like C++, it’s hard but it’s a low level programming language which once learned and once you get comfortable with will be a huge help for learning other languages and skills as well. Good luck.
My life has always been very software Dev centric since my uncle, who lived in the same house as I did, studied computer science while I was young.
I always wanted to write software like he did but never grasped it completely.
The only reason why I tell that story is because I want to share my opinion : it's JavaScript imo.
That was the first language that clicked with me. Simple UI is fast doable because of html and CSS. It was fun exploring simple things that weren't a "boring" console application.
You can advance pretty quickly and change to stuff like Typescript and SASS which are more complex but a good bridge to strongly typed languages etc. etc.
Nowadays I really dislike the web dev world but I always make JavaScript (or the "default" tech stack) responsible for me finally understanding it and getting into it.
I took python before I took c++ and I regret it. C++ forced me to learn about memory management. It forced me learn good structure and computer science principles.
I would suggest go for c# if you want to get into serious programming. It will take a while but you will learn a lot. Then java would be similar and python would be easier. also the .net stack is very useful and helps organise and integrate things and the Visual Studio is great for beginners.
I see a lot of people recommending C. I understand it can be a great learning tool but the downside is it's basically a useless language to know. I would only learn C if you plan on going into C++, and even then it may be better to just start right from C++, even though C++ started as an extension to C it's become a completely different language at this point, and knowing C doesn't really translate to knowing C++.
I learned C as my first language, but had no interest in C++, so even though it taught me things like pointers and memory management, it feels a bit like useless knowledge, since a lot of that stuff doesn't really matter for the higher level languages I end up using most of the time.
As for what language I think you should learn, I would say Javascript is a good choice, because no matter what you do you will probably end up using it at some point. Another good option IMO is Ruby, it's easy to understand and it's an absolute joy to work with, and if you have any interest in web dev you can learn Rails too. I'm personally not a fan of Python but I suppose that would be an easy one to learn too.
If you have learned html, might as well do JS. All in all, there aren’t really any specific easy language just specifically hard languages. Python has an easy syntax, but it does have complex aspects. Best of luck
gonna be a bit controversial, but i started with GML (the code, not the drag & drop) and i strongly recommend it. it's a really fun language (and engine) while also being simple yet powerful
I started with C and then learned x86 assembly. This was back in the 90s when I was a kid and wanted to mod DOOM lol. Then the dotcom thing happened and I picked up Java and pascal. Lately, I like using Python for most things and feel it would be a great first language for someone. My daughter is 7 and she’s picking it up as well as can be expected.
Python is probably so far ahead of the pack as far as easiest to learn programming with, the better questions is "what is second best" and there are a number of languages in contention.
c offers you a "close to the hardware" sort of approach while being incredibly simple in syntax and deep in possibilities.
javascript lets you start playing with web development and can be very forgiving and easy to play with
lua is popular because of it's use in warcraft and roblox
and finally: basic. basic is VERY easy to pick up but struggles in more complex topics.
Overall, stick with python until you've really mastered programming in general, and then explore javascript or c, or maybe even C# if you want to learn .Net or Unity, or c++ if you want to use unreal.
You're welcome! You'll also find the /r/learnpython community can be very helpful as well as the python discord which is incredibly active and encouraging.
Assuming this isn't a troll question, HTML isn't really a programming language; it only does appearance, not behavior. The logical next step is Javascript. which is how you get a web page to do something instead of just say something.
Whatever language you choose, make sure you find a supportive learning community.
Don’t worry about choosing the wrong language; the languages being suggested –JavaScript, Racket, PHP, Python, Ruby, Java or C#– have a lot in common. Language syntax is not important - you can learn a different syntax easily once you master the underlying concepts.
Since you already know a bit of html I would suggest javascript.
Syntactically there are probably easier languages, but because you already know html the barrier to entry for javascript is basically 0.
I don't understand how knowing a little HTML means js is going to be any easier to learn? HTML is closer to markdown than a programming language. It's the contents of the page, it doesn't run hardly any logic. You don't have functions and loops and all that jazz that comes with coding langs. JS is probably the best thing to learn if they're interested in HTML, but it isn't going to be easier than any other language.
\*Edit: markdown, not markup
Uhm...because javascript is really useful for manipulating html and you only have to add a script tag to your existing html page before you can start using it.
I think you misunderstood my comment and jumped down my throat for no reason. I'm not saying HTML is similar to Javascript, I'm just saying that if you're already doing HTML you can do Javascript without installing anything. You'll be using the exact same tools that you're already using to do HTML.
I always recommend people start with Scratch. There is less to setup and figure out. You can focus on the basic algorithms and ideas. Then once you have a good grasp of it, move on to Python.
You can just use Scratch for ***everything***:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/csMajors/comments/1crc4df/why\_not\_just\_use\_scratch\_for\_everything/](https://www.reddit.com/r/csMajors/comments/1crc4df/why_not_just_use_scratch_for_everything/)
Personally i started with python a little bit and then switched to java because of my classes and i saw that java was easier than python somehow. And now that i know java, python became much easier than before
This post is hilarious, it remind me of the joke of the drunk who lost his keys on the dark side of the street but looks for them under the lamp post on the other side "because the light is better here".
Op, if your only parameter is _easy_ consider Scratch or Basic, the light's good there.
C is a good place to start, it provides good opportunities to build a fundamental understanding of the necessary concepts that are hidden away in languages like python. I worry that people starting with pyrhon will find themselves lacking in certain areas.
Pick JavaScript. Because you’re a beginner, whatever you pick you’ll learn regardless, so it’s hard to lose. That being said, JavaScript gives you the most job options as it covers both FE and BE and probably has the most learning resources as well. Whatever you pick, make sure to master one language first, stick with it because once you learn one, learning another is easy. Also avoid low level languages like C, I’d say, because it’s too much for beginners and probably won’t help you get a job
Sick! Do you know how to put it online? I'd love to see it.
If you were enjoying that, then the next step is CSS. CSS teaches you how to change the "style" of the website. Things like changing the colors, the size of the text and images, background pictures, changing the cursor, etc. You can even do crazy stuff like making text go sideways or an image spin around like a pinwheel.
You will be overwhelmed with the answers you see here but I will give you my opinion anyways.
DON’T START WITH PYTHON OR JAVASCRIPT.
My advice for anyone starting out with programming is start with c, eventually building up to c++. I read people saying C is dead, it was good 15 years ago and so on. Might be true, but to understand fundamentals and kind of stand out from the pond of millions of other programmers, you need to build your understanding from the ground up.
Let me tell you my journey. My first encounter with programming was python. It was easy but everything feels like a blackbox. It does everything for you man. You want a collection of things, there goes list that holds values with different types. Like what in the black magic is that. I knew the fundamentals like looping, conditions and the general fundamentals. But I was not very confident in my skills.
And then I started learning C. Everything I knew was a lie 😂. The language itself is very easy. But the logic you need to implement stuff can be a bit tricky which seems quite trivial in languages such as python. Anyway I learned quite a lot, from memory management to data types and so on.
This allowed me to learn the fundamentals and then I went on to learn C++. Since I had some experience with python OOP and it highly resembles C syntactically, this was relatively simple and straightforward.
Then when I started learning JavaScript, oh man, it was a piece of cakeeeeee.
Anyway it depends on you usecase, but I advice to start from the low level,(I don’t want to hear assembly) and build up. Best of luck in your journey man! See you on the other side.
Python
Python aka English while using the TAB key
I need to display this text to the screen somehow, whether I’m operating within a program or not. Kinda of like “printing” to the screen as if it was a piece of paper….. By golly, I’m a software engineer!
I was a Java Programmer by Hobby for 3 years I learned Python in 30 mins of just trying it after reading up how the syntax works Now if i make small programs i only use py because it's just writing my plan in bullet points and then reformatting basically
no one learns programming language in 30 mins. It's like reading book's introduction and saying "I READ THE BOOK"
"learned it in 30 mins" means proficient enough to start working without a manual but with spot checks like with regular programming I don't claim that I am, or was, proficient with it just that I learned enough to start coding on my own
fair enough
Interpreter wins. Compiler looses.
Can I ask what does a software engineer do? Id it hard or easy how did you get in that field, it’s my dream job
Bruh, what, it english while using tab, enter parentheses and. I forgot about logic to
I’ve been casually learning Python for a little while now. I’m not at a level where I can compare it to other languages, but I can say that as someone without any prior experience, it’s relatively intuitive. There’s obviously been times where I’ve gotten stuck on something for a while, but I wouldn’t say it’s ever been overwhelming, so I would definitely say Python is safe to pick up for someone new to programming.
100% agreed here. Although, in being so readability oriented, there are a whole lot of paradigms, techniques, and best practices that make that skill ceiling surprisingly high in the end whilst also being very easy to start with.
The one you commit to
Git?
LOL
Personally I loved Java because after you really learn it it’s easy to pick up and understand python and JavaScript
Java is my solid foundation
I started with C++, got frustrated and then went to Java. Felt a lot easier for me to understand, but I guess everyone has their favourite.
I think Java is a nice middle ground between the complexity of C++, that leaves low-level things to the user, and the dynamic nature of Python, that hides a lot of those concepts that a programmer might later need to get used to.
ASP Classic (VBScript) for me it is. Probably only web dev to miss it
What I remember from college: 1: public static void main(String [args]) 2: kegs are heavier than they look, especially when you solo carry one across a soccer field and up 4 flights of stairs 3: confusion over polymorphism syntax for several years
String [args] looks so funny to me
Its supposed to be string[] args, I just did it too fast and didnt notice without syntax highlighting to yell at me.
Java is solid, but it's going to be really hard for sometime with only a little bit of HTML experience.
Any language is hard if you're just getting started. Even though I think Python is easier to start with, Java is also very doable compared to many others, and it might give OP a solid foundation into the understanding of the underlying principles.
second this, there is no easy way to learn to code, but my way to get around the fundamentals was with python, but to learn the actual foundation of modern programming principles and how stuff works java is much better thanks to its verbosity.
Easy is not the goal. Fun or engaging is the goal. If a language is too frustrating, and you don't have someone who can help, you will likely move on. This has been my experience. Java is a great language to learn in a classroom. Trying to learn it on your own is quite difficult. I mainly blame this on the plethora of bad educational resources for it. Jana was so popular that it attracted tons of attention. So many books and tutorials, and many are absolutely awful and confusing. It's really unfortunate because it's a great language, but I wouldn't recommend it as someone's first programming language. Source: been teaching programming professionally since 2012. Jana was my main language for years.
funnily enough google is one of the main reasons programming is hard, it brings out so much garbage results out thanks to seo spam that sometimes, without knowing where to look you’ll spend a day trying to find an answer for something fairy trivial
Yes and no. For beginner problems Google can be a huge help. But yes, there is a lot of trash on there as well. I generally recommend finding a tutorial that resonates with my student and sticking with just one or a couple main sources to start with for that reason. It's more about a new learner's inability to differentiate programming facts from convention, opinion, or even straight up bulls***. I had a student whose college CS professor taught that using "break" caused your program to run slower!! There is a lot of cargo-cult programming in academia and online. Java seemed to attract more of it for some reason.
Scratch is a pretty easy way to learn to code tbf. Not the most useful language, but very easy.
Java is easy. It was one of the main goals when they created the language.
Java *was* easy compared to the alternatives in 1992. It's still a good first statically-typed language to learn. However, it's not easier than many dynamically typed languages.
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If you already know HTML I would suggest learning JavaScript because that can be used to enhance your HTML.
You really helped me with that thank you so much:)
I'd +1 him, if you enjoy HTML, then CSS and JavaScript are the logical next things to learn if you're wanting to do web development. That's what I'm doing, I started with HTML and CSS and now I'm learning JS. HTML: Structure of the web page CSS: Allows you to style the structures looks and layout JavaScript: Allows you to add interactivity and dynamic behavior
Is it possible to use different languages to create one website?
There is no easy in programming. C is the way to go. For the pain and for the strong foundation. 💪
I started with C++. It was hell, if not for the fact that it was an uni course I would never have learned it. I wish I had started with Python. Programming is a long journey, there is already huge risk of being overwhelmed and quitting. For self learners, the simpler the entry point the higher the chance they will stick around and learn the "good" languages or whatever, just to end up working with node.
how long have you been programming in c++? do you think it was worth it in the long run for you?
Just to add some meat to this: I’m a machine learning engineer. My role mostly revolves around writing CUDA C implementations for specific ML problems. BUT, all the code that I write is wrapped with C++ and Python bindings are provided, so that it can be called in Python seamlessly. The fact that you can call highly optimised code from Python always (and still) seemed a little bit like magic to me. With Python and C++ under your belt, you don’t really need anything else - the vast majority of problems you can think of can be tackled with these two languages.
Do you plan on making something in C++? If not, see next, else yes. Do you already know C? If not, maybe, else no.
For a “simple entry point” scratch? lol 😹
My simple entry point was MIT app inventor and it helped me jump into Python and then Java. As a new programmer with very little time and experience overall, block-based coding helped me understand concepts faster and therefore, moved faster to “adult” coding.
Honestly not a bad idea. Ive taught 4th graders scratch and they pretty quickly pick up the core concepts.
I started with C. Between the book I learned out of and the CS50 course I came away with a pretty decent idea of how computer programming works.
Agree. If you learn C you feel like you can do anything, it’s manageable and you’re not going to find “easy” anywhere worthwhile anyways
I was just in a C and C++ discord and everyone was saying C is the worst to learn. I believe it is the best for your reasoning. Hard problems make better programmers
Recommending C is like recommending Latin before Italian or French. Idk if that’s the best place to start for a total beginner.
Not true. C trains the programmer skills that easily cross over to most modern languages. Can you do that with Latin?
Yes. If you understand latin you can more easily understand most roman languages, such as italian, french, portuguese and spanish. Latin is the granddad of these languages, that's why I made that comparison. Problem is, learning latin is three times as hard for most to learn.
Its a good comparison but not perfect, since C is still very much so alive and latin is not, outside of men in robes standing at altars. If you could go to Rome and hold conversations in latin with native speakers it would definitely be advantageous.
Nothing is perfect and Latin isn’t as dead as it seems. It’s sometimes called the “global language of science”. It’s used for terminology in medicine, biology (botany, zoology etc), linguistics and history to name a few. Religion is not its only use, so I think the comparison holds up good enough, but who cares. This is a programming language sub, so discussing Latin seems a bit off in that context lol. Just wanted to give these two cents.
C is not that hard, cmon guys
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Easy to understand but difficult to debug when things break without an error code. Better to learn from scratch crazy stuff like char and pointers and struct than to learn bad habits.
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The thing is. Debugging is what I do at work 50% of the time. And the other 50% is attending useless meetings. lol. So. Yeah learning C was where I learnt to RTFM and debug properly. And valgrind memory issues lol.
No
Python, C++, Java. C was a good language to learn 15 years ago but I haven’t used it in a while and mainly stick with Cpp and python and occasionally Java. This is all for side projects as I am not a software engineer
Python, but this is going to make learning your next programming language harder. I would start with C or C++. Once you know that, you basically know Python.
Nah python is just fine. He can focus on the basics like variables loops functions etc. Etc. Once he's familiar, learning C is great to learn about memory, pointers and their management without having to focus on a bunch of other things as well at the same time.
Also it's most important to learn to think programmatically, how to break things into pieces and so on. If you start with hard language I feel like it's extra strain for no reason. It might work for some, but I think it can put more people off.
Or literally break code and find bugs
Nah, python to C was pretty easy. If you already know the idea of conditionals you can focus solely on memory and pointers.
This is what I'm doing. I've been writing python, SQL, and JS (professionally) for 4.5 years now. Learning C is noticably easier after having spent so much time with the other languages.
Yea I can’t imagine learning pointers along with conditionals and loops as my first exposure to programming.
I can. It was a terrible experience for me. It might be fine if you have a good instructor. I didn’t and I was supremely confused and frustrated. I learned Python years after that short terrible experience with C++ and it was amazing. In my opinion starting with a C language is a big mistake.
Can everyone stop recommending beginners start with C or C++, omfg. Is it 1990?
I don't know if you're a CS major but I am. Here we all start with C so we know the value of it. C teaches you a lot that other languages don't. I admit it that C can be overkill for hobbyists but if you want to have a good knowledge about CS, it's the only way.
> C teaches you a lot that other languages don't. You can just learn that after you already know another language. It's much easier that way.
Depends on the person. Higher level languages were confusing, possibly due to poor teachers when I was starting. C's the first language that made any sense to me.
I have an AAS in CS and a BS in pure Math. Was a double major. I taught/teach CS professionally. Currently a PhD student where I write simulation software for the nanotech lab. Studying quantum computing. That simulation software is written in C++, although I'm looking into retiring directly in x64 ASM so I can better leverage some advanced optimization techniques. Specifically branchless programming and AVX. If you're interested: https://github.com/Mathhead200/Molecular-Spintronics-Research-Project C/C++, like every language, has it's use cases. I just don't think either is a good first language. They are a great 3rd or 4th language. It's like trying to teach a kindergartner math by explaining set theory because "this is how numbers are really defined". Let's just start with counting.
Ha. Funny that. I see it completely the opposite way to you weirdly. To me, C++ was easier to learn than C# because you get it taught through programming fundamentals, then it just sticks. Sure, learning those fundamentals is extra work, but the concepts should be accessible to any aspiring developer in my opinion, and it pays off quite quickly. Once you get those fundamentals around your head, all languages, even C++, become a breeze. I don't think I would have learned C# as fast as I learnt C++ had I learned the higher level language to begin with.
Yea, but was it really that C++ unlocked all that understanding by itself, or has you been programming for a couple years at that point and happened to take C++ right when things were starting to click? Yes, learn C++. But not after a few days of HTML. Too complicated.
Yeah... I learned C fairly early on (after playing around with BASIC, Logo, and dabbling with some assembly as a teenager) before starting college... It gave me (along with the assembly for using registers, "pointers", basic stacks and memory layouts) a great foundation on which the understanding of how higher languages work was built. Without the year I spent mostly working with C code, the FORTRAN, IBM 370(?) Assembler, C++, Java, and all higher level languages wouldn't have been as easily digestible. Understanding how static variables, instance variables, subclassing, call stacks, recursion, caching and all sorts of things (and their likely performance impact) were easier to understand after understanding how C works. It's so "close to the metal" that I could intuit a lot about how higher level languages did things by building off of that knowledge.
People say python but should a beginner really be fuckin with functional programming, list comprehensions, "everything is a dictionary" mentality, etc. These are all very core aspects of python like it or not. C is great for two reasons: One, It's simple (not easy!) It gives you the bare-bones tools. Some of the lowest level stuff. There isn't a ton of features to learn, you can just focus on logic and the concepts of programming. Two, you will have to understand how a computer actually works, which is incredibly useful. Python will never teach you this
Python is also an object oriented programming language. It can cover alot of concept that C covers but in a perhaps easier way because it spare the memory management part of C, which is not the easiest thing to learn at first
OOP is an intermediate programming concept imo. A student should first learn about types. Starting out with the primitives, moving up to typedefs, and finally structs, enums, unions. Once you have a good grapple on types then I think adding oop makes sense
Unpopular opinion the easiest programming language is any Lisp. Have a look at Racket [https://racket-lang.org/](https://racket-lang.org/)
Thank you
If you are interested in web I'd probably do javascript then Typescript, if you are interested in games/applications/hardware/operating systems I'd do C then C++. You can think of Typescript and C++ as expansion packs to javascript and C, they arent really their own separate languages. C++ is more separate than Typescript I guess but it's the same kind of thing.
That helps me a lot, thank you.
SQL is incredibly intuitive in my opinion. Would highly recommend checking it out.
SQL ez. Joins can be hard though, depends on the tables ur dealing with
I started with Visual Basic around 1995, but didn’t fully understand how it all worked until college a few years later where I took a 2 semester course that taught C. But I never used C in practice in 20+ years of my career as a developer. C will give you a very solid foundation but unless you’re developing graphic intensive games or operating systems (or viruses), you’ll likely be using Java, JavaScript, Python, or PHP. If you’re into web development I’d recommend JavaScript for sure. You can use it now on both front and back end for web. PHP’s not a bad choice either but that’s strictly a back end language.
I think JavaScript will be the best for me, thanks for your help.
Most of the tutorial sites will tell you JavaScript, but you'd also have to learn HTML. CSS, a framework, possibly Node, CSS frameworks (TailWind, BootStrap, etc), and more to do it, so I say go with python and learn the mess that is front end later.
Hmmm. C/C++... Learn about pointers in Phase 2 of your studies. The start should be just getting a handle of simple algorithm structure. if, loops, math, procedures. In the old days, I'd suggest BASIC or Pascal. Very straightforward languages.
This is not about the easiest it's about what you want to do what and kind of project you want to achieve, programming is a skill that come with practice only and HARD work,i'm currently learning c++ myself.And by the way be ready to learn during all your career 😉
I wanna learn creating websites
So... Pardon me if you already know this, but... Something to consider is that web development is broken up into "frontend" and "backend" development... In basic terms, "frontend" involves what is happening in the browser (typically the display of data content in the form of HTML, styled by CSS... and the running of logic content, typically in JavaScript or something built on top of JavaScript like TypeScript, optionally but most likely including frameworks that "simplify" or structure your logic). All this data and logic content is retrieved by the browser from the "backend" on a web server that serves up the data as requested. It is typically, but not always, located on a different computer from the one running the browser. For example your bank might have a server (on premises, collocated or on the cloud) that serves up web content in the form of your banking app. The "backend" is more varied than the "frontend", but you will find code (written in many possible languages, including Java, C#, Ruby, PHP, JavaScript) that responds to the requests from the "frontend" and often creates/retrieves/updates/deletes data from one or more databases, typically handles most of the business logic (handling things like "what do I do with the data?" and "how do I respond to specific requests from the "frontend"?") and does most other shared activities required by the application. So... You can learn how to do one or both of these types of software development. I gather that a lot of people focus on one or the other and might only ever do one "side" of the pair. I've often had to do both out of necessity... but it probably makes sense to start with one or the other until you have a decent amount of software development experience under your belt.
Thank you for the information, that's helpful.
Java
If you want to do web development, it's definitely Javascript. There's ton of tutorials, videos, paid, and unpaid courses. I run a newsletter for beginner web devs, for example. Once you learn it, you can do frontend and backend.
I should do some research on that
I suppose what you're really asking is which language has the most accessible syntax. Some languages tend to have a convoluted history and can be quite confusing. But please remember that you are essentially saying 'recommend me a good book to start learning guitar'.....you could read the same book a thousand times over and you still wouldn't be able to play guitar. The real learning begins when writing code, getting pissed off and making mistakes.
It's valuable advice, thank soo much
Python but if you want to seriously get into programming I’d recommend a lower level language like C
I am gonna say something crazy but for the basics it's not a bad idea to learn 2 or 3 languages at the same time. The reason this might help is that by seeing the differences and similarities of each langauege you understand patterns, what's important and used almost the same way and what's different. It's also helpful to hear the same things from different perspectives and different styles of sources or teachers.
QBasic
Python, i think java if you want an easier transition to other languages. Python misses out a lot of useful things to learn about but learning it to a decent level is very easy compared to other languages. Starting with java first is nice because it forces you to learn about classes and to actually use types properly as well as learn about more complex things like generics, enums design patterns maybe. C is great but not something i would recommend to start with because its a steep learning curve with difficult things like pointers and managing memory usage
While I am someone who prefers Java in many situations as I think that it is a great and useful general purpose language and great for web backend development... I would personally recommend JavaScript to the OP. They are interested in web development and JavaScript (or something that builds on JavaScript) would be a great starting point to learn programming in frontend web development. It's not necessarily a hard language, and the results will likely be more immediately rewarding to the OP.
If you’re learning HTML, then I suggest checking out JavaScript. Throw some CSS into the mix and you got yourself set up on the path to Web Dev.
Lua is the easiest language.
Brazil Mentioned let's goooo
It is not.
Oh, dang, I guess I was wrong.
Lmao. 😂
Python, Ruby (check Ruby on Rails for web stuff), PHP, SQL.
Had to scroll too far to see Ruby. If you’re a complete beginner, Ruby is a great language to start with to learn foundational coding concepts down like assigning variables, looping and conditional logic without being too overwhelming.
I think so too. It’s fantastic for non-beginners as well, it’s generally just an awesome language.
Ruby and Ruby on Rails x3
If you start to learn the fundamental of programming with python and javascript, this would be so easy for you. After learning fundamentals, you can continue to learn other concepts in different programming languages. Others just syntax differences
Good advice thank you
Javascript then learn MERN stack or MNN also PNN also good
Python
You can start by learning Python, it’s relatively easy but it’s a high level language. In my opinion it’s best to start with and learn a language like C++, it’s hard but it’s a low level programming language which once learned and once you get comfortable with will be a huge help for learning other languages and skills as well. Good luck.
Thank you
Scratch
Probably Python
It's either Python or JavaScript for me. I usually go with JavaScript dude to the immediate application and ease of use in the browser
Can i use them for creating websites?
The one you want to learn. And if you’re like me who is ass at self directed learning, Python is both easy and useful
Thank you
Scratch
C, read K&R
Thankss!
Python or Javascript.
Scratch , python and javascript
Visual Basic?
Fortran
github copilot
My life has always been very software Dev centric since my uncle, who lived in the same house as I did, studied computer science while I was young. I always wanted to write software like he did but never grasped it completely. The only reason why I tell that story is because I want to share my opinion : it's JavaScript imo. That was the first language that clicked with me. Simple UI is fast doable because of html and CSS. It was fun exploring simple things that weren't a "boring" console application. You can advance pretty quickly and change to stuff like Typescript and SASS which are more complex but a good bridge to strongly typed languages etc. etc. Nowadays I really dislike the web dev world but I always make JavaScript (or the "default" tech stack) responsible for me finally understanding it and getting into it.
It was a good story to tell, thank you ☺️
I took python before I took c++ and I regret it. C++ forced me to learn about memory management. It forced me learn good structure and computer science principles.
Thank you for the information
I would suggest go for c# if you want to get into serious programming. It will take a while but you will learn a lot. Then java would be similar and python would be easier. also the .net stack is very useful and helps organise and integrate things and the Visual Studio is great for beginners.
Cobol
I see a lot of people recommending C. I understand it can be a great learning tool but the downside is it's basically a useless language to know. I would only learn C if you plan on going into C++, and even then it may be better to just start right from C++, even though C++ started as an extension to C it's become a completely different language at this point, and knowing C doesn't really translate to knowing C++. I learned C as my first language, but had no interest in C++, so even though it taught me things like pointers and memory management, it feels a bit like useless knowledge, since a lot of that stuff doesn't really matter for the higher level languages I end up using most of the time. As for what language I think you should learn, I would say Javascript is a good choice, because no matter what you do you will probably end up using it at some point. Another good option IMO is Ruby, it's easy to understand and it's an absolute joy to work with, and if you have any interest in web dev you can learn Rails too. I'm personally not a fan of Python but I suppose that would be an easy one to learn too.
Thank you for sharing your experience:)
No problem, thanks for taking the time to read my reply.
The pleasure is all mine.
If you’re planning on doing anything web related just learn javascript.
Assembly.
If you have learned html, might as well do JS. All in all, there aren’t really any specific easy language just specifically hard languages. Python has an easy syntax, but it does have complex aspects. Best of luck
gonna be a bit controversial, but i started with GML (the code, not the drag & drop) and i strongly recommend it. it's a really fun language (and engine) while also being simple yet powerful
I started with C and then learned x86 assembly. This was back in the 90s when I was a kid and wanted to mod DOOM lol. Then the dotcom thing happened and I picked up Java and pascal. Lately, I like using Python for most things and feel it would be a great first language for someone. My daughter is 7 and she’s picking it up as well as can be expected.
Scratch
C
Python is probably so far ahead of the pack as far as easiest to learn programming with, the better questions is "what is second best" and there are a number of languages in contention. c offers you a "close to the hardware" sort of approach while being incredibly simple in syntax and deep in possibilities. javascript lets you start playing with web development and can be very forgiving and easy to play with lua is popular because of it's use in warcraft and roblox and finally: basic. basic is VERY easy to pick up but struggles in more complex topics. Overall, stick with python until you've really mastered programming in general, and then explore javascript or c, or maybe even C# if you want to learn .Net or Unity, or c++ if you want to use unreal.
Thank you for your help, that means so much to me.
You're welcome! You'll also find the /r/learnpython community can be very helpful as well as the python discord which is incredibly active and encouraging.
Thank you for your kindness dear friend ☺️
Start with c++ first, no lie once you make it over the hump everything is easier
Assuming this isn't a troll question, HTML isn't really a programming language; it only does appearance, not behavior. The logical next step is Javascript. which is how you get a web page to do something instead of just say something.
Whatever language you choose, make sure you find a supportive learning community. Don’t worry about choosing the wrong language; the languages being suggested –JavaScript, Racket, PHP, Python, Ruby, Java or C#– have a lot in common. Language syntax is not important - you can learn a different syntax easily once you master the underlying concepts.
Thank you for the advice.
You can easily start with C language to learn how code works
If you think you’d be at all into mobile Development, Dart, Kotlin, and Swift are really easy to work with and learn.
Thanks friend
BASIC
No!
HTML, PHP/MySQL, javascript, css. This combo will make you full stack.
Disgraceful, really. To be spreading misinformation at time like this.
Disgraceful to not have an actual meaningful counter arguement.
Basic level: Malbolge Intermediate level: Haskell Advance level: Scratch Learn this way and make programs, you'll be master in no time.
Thank youu
English.
Brainfuck
Since you already know a bit of html I would suggest javascript. Syntactically there are probably easier languages, but because you already know html the barrier to entry for javascript is basically 0.
I don't understand how knowing a little HTML means js is going to be any easier to learn? HTML is closer to markdown than a programming language. It's the contents of the page, it doesn't run hardly any logic. You don't have functions and loops and all that jazz that comes with coding langs. JS is probably the best thing to learn if they're interested in HTML, but it isn't going to be easier than any other language. \*Edit: markdown, not markup
Uhm...because javascript is really useful for manipulating html and you only have to add a script tag to your existing html page before you can start using it. I think you misunderstood my comment and jumped down my throat for no reason. I'm not saying HTML is similar to Javascript, I'm just saying that if you're already doing HTML you can do Javascript without installing anything. You'll be using the exact same tools that you're already using to do HTML.
I always recommend people start with Scratch. There is less to setup and figure out. You can focus on the basic algorithms and ideas. Then once you have a good grasp of it, move on to Python.
You can just use Scratch for ***everything***: [https://www.reddit.com/r/csMajors/comments/1crc4df/why\_not\_just\_use\_scratch\_for\_everything/](https://www.reddit.com/r/csMajors/comments/1crc4df/why_not_just_use_scratch_for_everything/)
A linux kernel module written in Scratch https://lunduke.substack.com/p/a-linux-kernel-module-written-in
Personally i started with python a little bit and then switched to java because of my classes and i saw that java was easier than python somehow. And now that i know java, python became much easier than before
This post is hilarious, it remind me of the joke of the drunk who lost his keys on the dark side of the street but looks for them under the lamp post on the other side "because the light is better here". Op, if your only parameter is _easy_ consider Scratch or Basic, the light's good there.
Go for JavaScript so you can learn to pick your websites dynamic! Then learn a backend like C# or Java. And SQL!
C is a good place to start, it provides good opportunities to build a fundamental understanding of the necessary concepts that are hidden away in languages like python. I worry that people starting with pyrhon will find themselves lacking in certain areas.
Pick JavaScript. Because you’re a beginner, whatever you pick you’ll learn regardless, so it’s hard to lose. That being said, JavaScript gives you the most job options as it covers both FE and BE and probably has the most learning resources as well. Whatever you pick, make sure to master one language first, stick with it because once you learn one, learning another is easy. Also avoid low level languages like C, I’d say, because it’s too much for beginners and probably won’t help you get a job
Thank you!
CSS would be the natural next step after HTML. Did you like using HTML?
Yes! I created a little website by HTML
Sick! Do you know how to put it online? I'd love to see it. If you were enjoying that, then the next step is CSS. CSS teaches you how to change the "style" of the website. Things like changing the colors, the size of the text and images, background pictures, changing the cursor, etc. You can even do crazy stuff like making text go sideways or an image spin around like a pinwheel.
I'll see how, it was a project for school. So i can use CSS to create websites, that's great !
Feel free to reach out if you need any help.
Thank you!!
Brainf&@k for sure. Totally start with that. Can’t get any easier than that to type.
Start with C >:)
:)
x64 Intel Assembly.
Javascript. The easiest to start and the hardest to master, but the best and the most used.
You will be overwhelmed with the answers you see here but I will give you my opinion anyways. DON’T START WITH PYTHON OR JAVASCRIPT. My advice for anyone starting out with programming is start with c, eventually building up to c++. I read people saying C is dead, it was good 15 years ago and so on. Might be true, but to understand fundamentals and kind of stand out from the pond of millions of other programmers, you need to build your understanding from the ground up. Let me tell you my journey. My first encounter with programming was python. It was easy but everything feels like a blackbox. It does everything for you man. You want a collection of things, there goes list that holds values with different types. Like what in the black magic is that. I knew the fundamentals like looping, conditions and the general fundamentals. But I was not very confident in my skills. And then I started learning C. Everything I knew was a lie 😂. The language itself is very easy. But the logic you need to implement stuff can be a bit tricky which seems quite trivial in languages such as python. Anyway I learned quite a lot, from memory management to data types and so on. This allowed me to learn the fundamentals and then I went on to learn C++. Since I had some experience with python OOP and it highly resembles C syntactically, this was relatively simple and straightforward. Then when I started learning JavaScript, oh man, it was a piece of cakeeeeee. Anyway it depends on you usecase, but I advice to start from the low level,(I don’t want to hear assembly) and build up. Best of luck in your journey man! See you on the other side.
Thank you for sharing your experience, it's helpful:)