After playing a little bit with QBasic when I was a kid, I was given a K&R C book. My takeaway: programming is not for me. I didn't look at programming seriously again until I was 23. This article is terrible advice.https://www.zeroequalsfalse.press/2017/11/29/c/
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I've been grappling with this at the undergraduate level (where we do start with C++) for our object oriented course. What do you think are better options? Ruby?
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Ruby, JavaScript. But the main thing is start making things that you can share with others right away. Create a blog and start tweaking it in ways *you want*. There's nothing more motivating in programming than seeing an idea you had in your head take form.
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I completely agree with you on C - it's a terrible language. But as a first language, Ruby and Javascript are terrible choices as well - you may have more fun, but you will likely learn how to do everything wrong.https://medium.com/@mindplay/the-problem-with-learning-languages-like-javascript-php-ruby-or-python-first-is-you-can-get-away-7accc689d365 …
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Can you give an example of something "loose" you can get away with in both Ruby and JavaScript that you can't do in Go that you have to spend years to unlearn?
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Yes, you can learn how to get away with certain wrong things in Go as well, but it's not the first thing you will learn - in Go is easier to do things right, and you have to go deeper to break the rules - in Ruby, JS, Python etc. it's the other way around.
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I really want you to provide me with an example, not just rhetoric.
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I don't think my post is at all rhetorical though. In my experience, devs who don't know any of the stricter languages, even if they create working products, tend to write code that no one else can understand. Programming requires discipline - the loose languages don't teach it.
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My experience is that trying to bootstrap with a strict language causes people who could be great programmers to bounce off. I wrote Ruby and JS for years before writing way more code in Rust and TS and I have not experienced years of bad habits to unlearn.
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Which programming language do you recommend? I've heard about colleges where they use Python o JS, do you think it is a better choice? Also, I've read in some blogs about start learning a functional language like Haskell is even better, but I'm not sure that helps
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I think Ruby, JS are good. I've personally not taught Python but I can believe it's good for this.
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The most important thing is to build something you can share with others right away. A blog you can customize with code is a great choice.
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I like C, but I think it’s a terrible way for people to find out if they are interested in programming.
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They teach C++ as the first language at PCC and PSU here. I wonder if it's a hazing thing? I learned some Python on my own for an assignment just to have a segfault-free development experience.
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When I was at Brooklyn College (my early 20s) I took a couple intro CS classes that started with C. I didn't even hate it but there was so much song and dance to learn the basics. I felt "CS seems so theoretical" and switched to accounting :p
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C and pointers almost made me abort programming entirely.
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This might true for thousands of people. First language, friendly textbooks , scope and application of Lang are important. Unfortunately education system still focus on few Langs, generalized textbooks, narrow scope.
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