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I would actually recommend against using JS as your first, since it's so atypical.

by mkaziz 12y ago

danford 12y ago
I would have to disagree. It all depends on how you learn JS. I really liked the book JavaScript: The Definitive Guide 6th Ed. which at many points talked about the differences between JS and C. As someone who learned JS as a first language, I find the syntax is close enough to C and C-Like languages to make picking them up fairly easy, but I'm still a novice and while I know JS pretty well I've only dabbled in C, D, and Rust as lower level languages. I found these languages to be almost like "extended" JavaScript because I didn't have many issues reading simple functions, and that's why I think it's a good language to start on, you can learn how to actually read and understand code with C-like syntax which, for me, made understanding lower level C-like code seem a lot easier. Plus I think JS is fun to use because of how fast you can see your work "come to life". JS is also in high demand.
- DaCapoo 12y ago
  Choosing any language because it's in high demand is a bad decision, see "Why SICP matters"[0]. " I tell my students, "the language in which you'll spend most of your working life hasn't been invented yet, so we can't teach it to you. Instead we have to give you the skills you need to learn new languages as they appear." " With regards to your statement, "It all depends on how you learn JS": That could be said of any language. The fact that you learned the differences between JS and C is what helped you when you were beginning, not that you learned JavaScript instead of Java, Ruby, or Python. [0] - http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~bh/sicp.html http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~bh/sicp.html
  - gnur 12y ago
    That is odd advice, the top programming languages currently used have been around for at least 19 years (python, ruby, javascript, php, java, c, objective c) and while there are new languages being developed I don't see languages like go, rust or swift pushing any of those languages out of the market. If anything, programming languages are a long term investment and I think that learning a language that is in high demand isn't that bad of a decision, you could learn some obscure super expressive, highly functional, statically typed language, but there is large chance that you'll come in contact with javascript at one point in your career.
laydros 12y ago
Agreed. JavaScript is super useful. But it straddles a couple of paradigms in a way that makes it hard for me to recommend as a first language.
- orclev 12y ago
  JS is a necessary evil. It's one of the worst languages in terms of design (beaten only by PHP and obscure languages no ones heard of). Learning it as your first language is going to gain you very little since almost none of that knowledge is translatable into other languages, and you're likely to have picked up a bunch of really bad habits from it. Further making matters worse is that there are tons of really really really really really bad JS code snippets floating around the internet, things that make professional programmers want to gouge their eyes out just looking at them, and for a newbie who doesn't know any better they're just as likely to assume that writing code like that is actually an acceptable thing to do. In terms of a first language, nearly anything is going to beat JS in terms of learning useful things from it. The fact that we're stuck with JS now and you're going to need to learn it at some point doesn't mean you should expose a newbie to something like that, it will take them years to fix the damage that would do, it's like starting them at net negative in programming knowledge.

I would actually recommend against using JS as your first, since it's so atypical.

by mkaziz 12y ago

I would actually recommend against using JS as your first, since it's so atypical.

I would have to disagree. It all depends on how you learn JS. I really liked the book JavaScript: The Definitive Guide 6th Ed. which at many points talked about the differences between JS and C. As someone who learned JS as a first language, I find the syntax is close enough to C and C-Like languages to make picking them up fairly easy, but I'm still a novice and while I know JS pretty well I've only dabbled in C, D, and Rust as lower level languages. I found these languages to be almost like "extended" JavaScript because I didn't have many issues reading simple functions, and that's why I think it's a good language to start on, you can learn how to actually read and understand code with C-like syntax which, for me, made understanding lower level C-like code seem a lot easier. Plus I think JS is fun to use because of how fast you can see your work "come to life". JS is also in high demand.

DaCapoo 12y ago
Choosing any language because it's in high demand is a bad decision, see "Why SICP matters"[0]. " I tell my students, "the language in which you'll spend most of your working life hasn't been invented yet, so we can't teach it to you. Instead we have to give you the skills you need to learn new languages as they appear." " With regards to your statement, "It all depends on how you learn JS": That could be said of any language. The fact that you learned the differences between JS and C is what helped you when you were beginning, not that you learned JavaScript instead of Java, Ruby, or Python. [0] - http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~bh/sicp.html http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~bh/sicp.html
- gnur 12y ago
  That is odd advice, the top programming languages currently used have been around for at least 19 years (python, ruby, javascript, php, java, c, objective c) and while there are new languages being developed I don't see languages like go, rust or swift pushing any of those languages out of the market. If anything, programming languages are a long term investment and I think that learning a language that is in high demand isn't that bad of a decision, you could learn some obscure super expressive, highly functional, statically typed language, but there is large chance that you'll come in contact with javascript at one point in your career.

laydros 12y ago

Agreed. JavaScript is super useful. But it straddles a couple of paradigms in a way that makes it hard for me to recommend as a first language.

orclev 12y ago
JS is a necessary evil. It's one of the worst languages in terms of design (beaten only by PHP and obscure languages no ones heard of). Learning it as your first language is going to gain you very little since almost none of that knowledge is translatable into other languages, and you're likely to have picked up a bunch of really bad habits from it. Further making matters worse is that there are tons of really really really really really bad JS code snippets floating around the internet, things that make professional programmers want to gouge their eyes out just looking at them, and for a newbie who doesn't know any better they're just as likely to assume that writing code like that is actually an acceptable thing to do. In terms of a first language, nearly anything is going to beat JS in terms of learning useful things from it. The fact that we're stuck with JS now and you're going to need to learn it at some point doesn't mean you should expose a newbie to something like that, it will take them years to fix the damage that would do, it's like starting them at net negative in programming knowledge.