While I too am going to recommend a programming language, I'm going to recommend that you not learn a programming language.
A programmer becomes good, not by knowing all the intricacies of a single language, but by becoming familiar with the concepts that are common to all forms of programming, regardless of the language. In fact the more languages you learn, even to just a basic level, the more concepts you come across, and the more methods you will be familiar with which to solve problems. With many languages having a focus on solving certain tasks, knowing several provides insight into solutions that wouldn't be apparent to someone who only knew one language.
Similarly, learning from several people is better than learning from just one source. Excessively formal education of programming doesn't give you access to code examples from many different programmers, and will limit you. You can learn early on by reading other people's code, then adapting it and fixing it. Instead of having a specific problem defined, and then the whole of a solution set out in a textbook, go out and find a problem, and attempt to solve it. Then attempt to improve on the solution, several times if necessary.
What you need to do with your computer is set up an environment on it, where you can find problems to solve, and probably one of the best ways is to set up a web server, and then use programming in web design. That will give you something to use Python (PHP, Java, PERL, Ruby, etc.) on, as well as the slightly more accessable Javascript (it could also give you access to database programming which is a great skill to have, seeing as a lot of programming is all about manipulating data).
Another way is to play some computer games. MMORPG games like WoW and Rift allow players to customise the user interface by writing addon programs. These can be incredibly simple, and in the case of WoW are sometime only slightly more complicated than the macros used by most non-programming players. You don't need to subscribe to either of those games, as they have unlimited duration trials. WoW has a huge amount of quality documentation on writing addons, as well as a massive library of other people's addons that you can look at, over at wow.curse.com, and while Rift, being newer, has slightly less documentation, it's made quite a few improvements over WoW in it's Addon system, that make it easier to use, if not as easy to find some kinds of information.
The language used by both games for their Addons is Lua, and after programming BASIC (spectrum 48k, BBC Micro, and QBASIC under DOS), Javascript, PERL, Python, PHP, and even assembly language (PIC microcontrollers), it's easily my favorite language to use. Python comes joint second because it too is relatively easy to learn and use, alongside PIC assembly language, because although it's something most coders these days wouldn't dream of doing, on account of the language and concepts being so far removed from what a lot of them expect from a language, there's nothing like coding as close to the hardware as possible to learn how to optimise your code.
_________________
You aren't thinking or really existing unless you're willing to risk even your own sanity in the judgment of your existence.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.