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Not always true. I learned Pascal, and then Ada first (in college). Haven't used since then, but I had no trouble learning C, Java, Lua, or Python later on.
by ardit33 18y ago
Not always true. I learned Pascal, and then Ada first (in college). Haven't used since then, but I had no trouble learning C, Java, Lua, or Python later on. Lisp was slightly confusing, and I remember hating C++.
I think the key is learning well at least few kinds of languages. C (is a must), an object oriented language (Java), then a scripting language (Python, Lua, Ruby, Javascript, or Perl), then a pure functional language.
Of course, often in real life, often you end up using what is being dictated to you, but a good programmer should be aware of what's out there.
- silentbicycle 18y agoI think Lua is a particularly good language to learn early: it's quite small and very approachable for somebody vaguely familiar with the C languages, but it has coroutines, tall-call optimization, and quite a bit of flexibility via its meta-tables. I haven't used it on anything big enough to know if it's really practical for me as a getting-stuff-done language, but it's really growing on me. Also, can of worms and all, but the borders between "an OO language" and "a scripting language" are quite thin. You could learn OO from Python or (I suspect) Ruby. OO design made quite a bit more sense to me when it didn't have to work around flaws in C, C++, and Java's type systems.
- jcromartie 18y agoMy favorite thing about Lua is the way you can fit all of the syntax in your head. I never have to go to a reference when writing everyday code in Lua.
- silentbicycle 18y agoYes!