Flavius_Belisarius

Hey guys, I'm new here, so sorry in advance if this thread has been made before. I'm a complete neophyte to the world of programming, and I want to learn a language that will be useful to me in the future. I've heard that C++ and Java are the most popular, but my uncle told me that learning assembly language at some point would be very useful. From what I understand, assembly language is a low level language, so I would think that I should learn assembly first and then move on to other languages, to establish a firm ground in programming. Am I wrong? I really have no idea.

DaWei

Depends on how you feel about things. If you feel you need to be a master mechanic, cognizant of every bolt and nut in your vehicle, in order to drive properly, by all means tackle assembler first. If you are a fan of producing useful thangys from a certain abstract distance, fahgeddaboud it. I'm not pooh-poohing either, incidentally, I've traveled both roads.

__________________
Abstraction doesn't make it impossible to write bad code; it makes it possible to write superior code.
Contributor's Corner: Grumpy on C++ Exceptions DaWei on Pointers

Narue

>Am I wrong?
If you turn out to be a programming genius then you won't have any problems with assembly. Normal people, on the other hand, learn more easily with a forgiving language because they can focus on concepts rather than wrestle with the language, and assembly is about as far from forgiving as it gets. May I suggest Python to get you started?

__________________
Even if the voices aren't real, they have some pretty good ideas.

Wilheimer

DaWei's response pretty much says it all.

Assembly programming requires that you have a fairly comprehensive understanding of computer architecture in particular the processor. I am just starting to learn assembly but what little I have learned has given me a greater insight into how many HLL's work.

First I learned Basic and some C++ which made learning assembler alot easier.

Flavius_Belisarius

thanks guys. I guess I should probably start with something easier, perhaps Java.

Sane

I doubt I'm helping. But Java honestly scared the sh** right out of me when I was starting off. I regret ever looking at Java first, because it made me second guess my potential to ever get myself off the ground. Perhaps it was a bad tutorial, or the seemingly unreasoned syntactical complexities... but I just found it damn tricky to grasp.

This won't be the case for everyone of course.

Narue

>but I just found it damn tricky to grasp
Java was designed to be simple...at first. The developers quickly learned that their simple framework was good in theory but not so much in practice, so instead of fixing the foundations, they patched over it with piss and duct tape. That's what happens as languages (especially ones that were not designed to grow) gain new features and libraries that weren't considered at first.

__________________
Even if the voices aren't real, they have some pretty good ideas.

demon101

i am new to this programming and i am starting out with python.

__________________
Demon101 Production's

Code Forums

Harakim

I started off trying to learn c++, but gave up pretty quickly. I moved on to assembler and thought that was much easier. I never got very good at it, but I could do simple things. Then I learned BASIC. I think BASIC is the greatest language to start on. What I'm getting at is it's a lot about the way you think and how much trust you put in other people.

DaWei

How can you make such a horseshit statement? If it were easier, why didn't you learn it, and if you didn't get very good, how could you presume to judge what that takes? What do you mean by BASIC? VB isn't BASIC. BASIC is easy to learn but not a very effective tool. Thinking DOES have a lot to do with it, but where does trust come in, beyond being unable to trust a lot of online material such as tutorials and forum posts?

__________________
Abstraction doesn't make it impossible to write bad code; it makes it possible to write superior code.
Contributor's Corner: Grumpy on C++ Exceptions DaWei on Pointers