Noob question....

[MusicMakesDaMan]

I know this is a noob question (I'm mostly hardware-oriented and audio at that) But if I wanted to start writing small software programs, what would be the best language to study?...I've been told Linux but that it might require prior programming experience....any ideas?

 

[Emily]

Visual Basic by a long shot. It's really easy to learn and in terms of small programs it's really powerful. And fun too, in a geeky way.

 

[gruntwerk]

Start with a BOOK... Find one that covers something that interests you and "learn" from that. . .

My Quickbasic, Turbo Pascal, DBase, C, VB, Perl, and Fortran 77 books hardly ever get used, but lots of times, code samples save me from rethinking or redoing -- all i have to do is translate. . .

Anyway, as an example, I just had to dig up the old family tree stuff for a project my daughter had for school... its in a DBASE database - the only thing that it would print to is LPT1 - I tried getting windows to capture the port, it wouldn't print to my USB printer. . .

I was about to load dbase or the compiler to change it, but that was way too much work... I could have finished the conversion that I started to C or VB, again way too much work...
I have a little utility from a 1987 PCMAG written in ASM (prn2file in case your interested...), that i kept around that allows you to redirect LPT ports to a file...

BAM ... done. . .

The important thing here is not WHAT language you learn but WHAT you want to do is START... Build a toolkit, take the resources you have and use them when appropriate. . .

VB is great because it shields you from alot of the windoze API's but you eventually will need to learn them to get windows to do things the way you want it to . . . hence your journey into C...
I have never started a C or ASM program from scratch . . . Always started by changing an existing program. . .

In Linux, C, perl, python PHP, etc. . . ANJUTA is quite handy . . . and lots of source code is available for you to pick apart and change. . .

If you want something "Portable", try Python (*if your thinking about website stuff, try PHP*). . .

If you want something real easy, try VB. . . You will eventually get learn other languages... trips start with a step toward the car. . .

In any case, get a book on something and start there...

 

[MusicMakesDaMan]

Sounds like I''ll be picking up some lit on VB, and C.....thanks for your suggestions(and for not picking on a noob...heehee) Much appreciated.

 

[bleed_inc]

It's always a good thing to start off with the basic langs to get the whole programming concept.

I'd sugest perl & vb.

 

[Escher]

Recommending languages, for someone with no prior programming experiance,
I'd say BASIC. Now pple might disagree, but I think this is truly a the basic language, and it might be a walkover.

You can probably master it WELL in about 2 weeks. After that, you might want to look at Visual Basic (VB) then maybe C++(My honey)

 

[Iron_Cross]

The problem I have with VB or *Basic is poor programming syntax and habbits it teaches. Sure you might get some of the ideas of programming down, but that's about it. It might be better for your health to find a project to work on, then find a language that suits it.
Then on a side note...
Java and Perl all the way!

 

[DaRetard]

C++ & Java are my favs (PHP for web-based). And for VB you'll need to buy the Microsoft VB maker thing which is like $9402137452943075 unless there is another one I don't know about.

 

[Emily]

And for VB you'll need to buy the Microsoft VB maker thing which is like $9402137452943075 unless there is another one I don't know about.

You don't actually need the GUI... it simplifies things somewhat, but it's not mandatory. The only part of it that you need is a compiler, which I'm sure would turn up on Google somewhere. It takes a little more typing without the drag-and-drop stuff but it's still a lot easier than most other languages.

 

[DaRetard]

unless there is another one I don't know about.

^^^