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Scheme, because of this book: http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/ http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/ Why argue with the MIT folks? Followed immediately by: C, Javascrip
by mechanical_fish 18y ago
Scheme, because of this book:
http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/ http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/
Why argue with the MIT folks?
Followed immediately by: C, Javascript, and a scripting language (Ruby or Python are good choices).
You've also got to work Java in there somewhere, just so you know where people are coming from. It could come first, or last, depending on your tastes.
If you love Windows technologies you can probably substitute C# for one of those things. Maybe even for several of them. I have never seen .NET but I hear good things about it from those who have.
If you can't stand SICP, or can't follow it (perhaps because you are seven years old?) then the initial choice is harder. Javascript is sitting on your desk right now, so it's an obvious possibility. Try Ruby or Python. Or just give in and learn PHP like everybody else seems to do. You'll run into problems, but you can fix them later.
- helveticaman 18y agoI tried this. It hurt...I don't want to go into detail, but it hurt.
- antiform 18y agoWhy argue with the MIT folks? Because even MIT changed its intro programming class's language from Scheme to Python. That said, I would still have liked to learn Scheme or a Lisp as a first language. It's a tiny language at its foundations and allows you to express many different computer science concepts with little effort. Also, it's much, much easier to write a Scheme interpreter in Scheme than a Python interpreter in Python.