Ask HN: If you were to learn a programming language for your first time

Re:Ask HN: If you were to learn a programming language for y... by jaddison on Sunday January 31, 2010 @02:19PM (#1090909)

Seriously, pick one with great online resources. That gives you a lot of options at first glance, it would seem... Of course, online resources vary greatly in terms of quality. Personally, I wish I'd started (years ago...) with something like Python. Great resources, great community.

Great tutorials: http://diveintopython.org/ (for the recent Python 3: http://diveintopython3.org/)

What it all boils down to is finding a language that teaches you the fundamentals well. Once you have those basic precepts and fundamentals, you can transfer them quite easily to take on other languages.

And Python is also quite easy on beginners.

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Re:Ask HN: If you were to learn a programming language for y... by hga on Sunday January 31, 2010 @03:25PM (#1091012)

Good point ... but what language with any degree of mind share doesn't have great on-line resources today? All the ones that I've used after the late '70s are well covered as far as I can tell.

ADDED: about the only thing I've found that's subpar is x86-64 assembly, and I assume that's because x86 is well covered, x86-64 is quite new and isn't a big jump from it, and not all that many people are interested in it.

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Re:Ask HN: If you were to learn a programming language for y... by jordanbrown on Sunday January 31, 2010 @04:59PM (#1091185)

I was thinkin that same thing, Im sure you can find good online resources for any language.

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Re:Ask HN: If you were to learn a programming language for y... by gte910h on Sunday January 31, 2010 @03:29PM (#1091021)

Dive into python is for seasoned programmers trying to learn python.

Learn to program by Alan Guald(sp) is a much better resource for first time learners.

http://www.freenetpages.co.uk/hp/alan.gauld/

(Javascript and python both available there).

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