A intro to programming?

Charle692 · December 19, 2014

Am I the only person who learned on a BASIC language like QBASIC? I mean, that's the entire point of the language!

I was first introduced into the programming world with Visual Basic however I found that it wasn't really useful for me in the end since my University went straight into Java and oop. I wish that they would have started with something that would help me as my education progresses.

As a recommendation from me, I'm going to be a little different from everyone else here and say, if you plan on going to post secondary school in software engineering or something then I would learn what they will be teaching you in one of the schools you would most likely go to. It would give you a nice headstart and allow you to concentrate more on other courses than learning a programming language for the first time.

Lotus · December 19, 2014

I was first introduced into the programming world with Visual Basic however I found that it wasn't really useful for me in the end since my University went straight into Java and oop. I wish that they would have started with something that would help me as my education progresses.

As a recommendation from me, I'm going to be a little different from everyone else here and say, if you plan on going to post secondary school in software engineering or something then I would learn what they will be teaching you in one of the schools you would most likely go to. It would give you a nice headstart and allow you to concentrate more on other courses than learning a programming language for the first time.

Well, to be fair, I learned QBasic in 6th grade, not as a part of any degree.

madknight3 · December 19, 2014

I was first introduced into the programming world with Visual Basic however I found that it wasn't really useful for me in the end since my University went straight into Java and oop. I wish that they would have started with something that would help me as my education progresses.

Not sure if you mean VB.NET or VB6 (or something else) but nowadays VB.NET is a viable option for a beginner. The syntax is pretty simple and you learn OOP with it so it should make the transition to Java fairly painless. It's pretty much just relearning syntax because the basics are all there.

dbwun · December 19, 2014

I tried to a few ways of learning before I actually got to programming and became a web developer.

The CS50 Harvard course on iTunes U is a good bet if you like 1 hour lectures followed by practical work. The lecturer is very enthusiastic and easy to listen to.

Personally I like the CS 101 course on Udacity, it's broken up into tiny (often less than 5 minute) chunks that make it really easy to stop and start when needed (like all Udacity courses). You don't need to pay for either of these just click the "Get course materials" button and you have access to the full course on any device for free. CS 101 on Udacity is far more interactive and in all honesty a much better way to learn.

People are saying learn a low level language before a higher level one (CS50 is mainly C (low level) where as CS 101 is python (higher level)). To them I say learn what you want. In C you will be creating structs and char * instead of classes and string and there is definitely a lot to say for building up the basics of your knowledge but I would rather have fun painting pictures before I start to learn how the paint is made, higher level languages make it very easy for you to do that. If you are going to continue programming you are going to repeatedly fail and learn so you might as well start of easy and gradually introduce more complex concepts when you are more prepared.

If I could do it again I would definitely skip learning C right at the beginning. I would start in python, then once I had a secure knowledge of that I would dig deeper in to C and its supersets.