For business apps, I suggest COBOL, COmmon Business-Oriented Language. Oh
wait, we're not in the 80's anymore.

I learned PERL for the O'Reilly book Programming Perl, also known as the
Camel book because of the picture of the camel on the cover. O'Reilly has
many books on Perl and all are helpful.

It's very helpful to know the capabilities of the shell you are using, to
determine whether you need to write a quick script or a full blown program.
O'Reilly has books on shells to. (I don't work for O'Reilly, but I'm
sounding like a commercial)

But even after you settle on a language, then you need to learn about all
the API's (application programming interfaces) these are libraries of
routines to help the programmer get his work done faster.

So lets say you want to learn C or C++, depending on whether you use
linux/unix, or windows, there may be different API to write to the screen,
or read from a device more then just your basic I/O.

-----Original Message-----
From: plug-discuss-bounces@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
[mailto:plug-discuss-bounces@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us] On Behalf Of Dennis
Kibbe
Sent: Tuesday, May 19, 2009 5:13 AM

To: Main PLUG discussion list

Subject: Best first programming language

I searched the archive but didn't find a previous discussion about this.

A friend who graduates from high school next week wants to take a summer
course in programming. His goal is to become a business applications
programmer.

He asked me what language he should start with. I'd guess the prgramming
landscape is changing with more services going into the cloud.

Joseph, Hans, Charles I'm sure you have opinoins and I welcome anyone elses.

My friend, Ian isn't on the list so I'll point him to gmane.org to follow
the discussion.

dennisk

--
"Free Software, Free Society"
Free Software Foundation
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