Seems like we have a lot of opinions here. Here is a paper from ACM on the use of Python in for teaching programming. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=114017 -jmz On Sat, Feb 20, 2010 at 4:01 PM, Austin William Wright wrote: > Alan Dayley wrote: >> Python. >> > Absolutely NOT PYTHON. It breaks the first two rules of programming, the > assignment operator (=) assigns values to a variable, and always ignore > whitespace. Well my first two rules, at least. Plus it sucks at > consistent use of object-oriented programming. > > If you *really* need a general-purpose programming language, look at > Ruby, it's slightly more well behaved. Slightly. I would recommend > Javascript, it's a major programming language, and you can run it in > your web browser with literally nothing to install. Plus Javascript is > closely related to XML and HTML, while not programming languages, are > markup languages (a way of storing data) that is becoming very important > to know for many things. Though designed for the web, many of these > things are finding themselves become part of everyday computing, > especially XML. For these things, http://www.w3schools.com/ is popular. > > Any scripting language might be a good start at learning about > if/then/else logic, but none of these languages are going to teach how > computers really *process* or *store* information on the inside (how the > CPU executes the program or how variables are stored in memory), or for > that matter write an actual interactive computer program, you will need > a real language like C or C++. After learning something like Javascript > you will find C surprisingly limited in functionality if you try and do > things the same way, especially variable-length variables like strings > and arrays. Keep that fact in the back of your head for when, if, you > attempt C/C++. > > Whatever you do, Google " tutorial" should bring up something good. > In the way of books, however, you can't miss ones from O'Reilly ( > http://oreilly.com/ ), they are jade/teal and have a random animal on > the cover. > > Austin Wright. > --------------------------------------------------- > PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us > To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: > http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss > -- http://home.joshuazeidner.com/ --------------------------------------------------- PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss