Tek-Tips is the largest IT community on the Internet today!

Members share and learn making Tek-Tips Forums the best source of peer-reviewed technical information on the Internet!

  • Congratulations gkittelson on being selected by the Tek-Tips community for having the most helpful posts in the forums last week. Way to Go!

do you think C programming is the best foundation for newbie like me?

Status
Not open for further replies.

ciscomeo

Technical User
Jun 9, 2003
94
US
I want to learn programming, do you think C programming is the best foundation? if not what do you suggest?
 
Why not (but the C++ is more better)? Buy "The C++ Programming Language" by B.Stroustrup, download and install freeware Dev-C++ IDE - and go on!..
You may study C#, Java and/or PHP later (and make good career;)...
 
What kind of C or Dev C++ do you think I should download for beginners like me?
 
believe it or not, mirc scripting is a good place to start at. It's fairly easy to pickup on and its alot like C++, since it was made in C++. You learn about functions, loops, timers, variables ect...I used to mirc script and i decided to learn C and i picked up on it fairly quickly since i was mirc scripting for a few years. Or you could just go pickup some books and read read read.
 
There is a big difference between learning to program (how to drive), and the programming language(s) you use to do your work (the cars you drive).

If you're really considering this as a career say, then you need to make sure you make a good job of the former.
Learning how to program should cover aspects of how to design a program, which is extremely important if you want to write larger programs. The 'sit down and hack the code' approach is very limiting in the long run.

> do you think C programming is the best foundation?
Not if this is your first introduction to programming in general, and programming languages in particular.
C is a very powerful and flexible language, which also comes with a lot of traps for the unwary. It doesn't take too many key strokes to generate programs which will compile, but which will also crash the machine. Depends if you regard such things as a source of frustration or a challenge to be overcome.

> if not what do you suggest?
I started with Pascal (a long time ago)
Java and Python seem like good choices as well.
You should be able to get free implementations of any of those
At a push (like you already have it, or have lots of $$$), then perhaps Visual Basic.

You can find lots of compilers (or links to them) here

--
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Part and Inventory Search

Sponsor

Back
Top