training

[Matt Graham]

From: keith smith <klsmith2020 at yahoo.com>
> I would second starting with C.  I learned and used several
> languages before taking a C class.  C helped me understand the
> others.

The good thing about C is that it's relatively simple[0], and easy to get
started with in a Unix environment.

The bad things about C are that its base set of libraries is missing a bunch
of stuff that's just there in higher-level languages.  You also have to manage
your own memory in C, and do pointer arithmetic, which tends to cause
confusion among new programmers.[1]  C doesn't really do objects, either, and
if you write things without using objects in this day and age, other
programmers will sneer at you and treat you like a backwards outcast.  OTOH,
Angband and its variants are written in C, which gives you a fun multiplatform
roguelike game with lots of code examples to take a look at.

If you want to write something useful reasonably quickly, PHP's not bad at
all.  The base language has tons of useful functions in it.  Plus you can put
your application on the web reasonably easily after you've written it.

[0] The base language, that is.  Learning all the stuff in
libc/libm/libncurses and how to use them takes a lot longer.
[1] It took me several days to figure the pointer thing out.  YMMV on this.

-- 
Matt G / Dances With Crows
The Crow202 Blog:  http://crow202.org/wordpress/
There is no Darkness in Eternity/But only Light too dim for us to see