You probably learned to program a long time ago, with a personal computer-toy such as the Spectrum. There were not many options: there was Basic and then Basic in a different computer. If you went the formal way, probably you started with Pascal or, later on, Java, and, even later, Python. Not many options there either. It was that way or the highway.
But say you could have had a choice in your first programming language, say, you started right now. What would you like your language to be like? Is there any one language now that could be all you wanted your first language to be?
Oldest comments (28)
I've been considering whether BASH or JavaScript should be the go to language. Certainly these two languages are the ones on almost every computer straight out of the box. Anyone with a web browser can open "Javascript console" and start learning programming. BASH is good because you immediately get the ability to feel like the master of your computer. Plus if you do go into development later, you can use BASH skills for all kinds of developer tasks from renaming classes, to counting how many lines of code are in a directory, to using cURL to see what a request or response should look like, and beyond.
I kind of seem unable to remember bash syntax from one time to the next... I keep the Bash cookbook handy. OTOH, now that it's in Windows too, and of course in Macs (although most users probably ignore that) it's kinda everywhere too...
I started with Python many moons ago...
I really want to say that I wish I started with Javascript, because it's so pervasive. But the issue I have with that is all the fragmentation and weirdness that can be super overwhelming for beginners. Don't get me wrong, with a little experience, the JS landscape isn't impossible to navigate, but just the idea of its convoluted landscape is enough to throw new folks off.
When I think of beginner programming I think Variables, Types, Conditionals, Repetition and basic IO. For the purpose of starting on this journey, I think Python was great.
I haven't touched it in years though...
I started with VB in college, I kind of wished it was C just because it would give me an appreciation of having to learn about things like memory management, etc.
I wish I'd started with Ruby. I started with Java and fell off from programming for a couple years before getting back into it. There were other factors involved, but Java was not a super friendly for me at the time. I got back into code in Ruby and I really loved the simplicity of it. Now that I'm back in code, I'm a lot less sensitive to syntax stuff.
My first real programming language was Java back in 2013 (I'm only 21) when I picked up Java to try and make a mod for Minecraft. I ended up making a mod or two that did almost nothing and never figured out how to enact my grand plan of a mod, (long story), but it was a great experience regardless. I then moved on to more Java doing some work my high school's new FIRST robotics team and concurrently starting my web development career. I promptly picked up HTML, CSS, JS, and a touch of SQl. As the web goes I also learned generic XML and JSON, but those aren't exactly languages. Fast forward to college, and so far we've done Java, C, MIPS Assembly, and more C.
In my own time I've decided to work on my web development side as I actually love Javascript, though I will add I'm glad I'm in the JS world now and not 10 years ago.
As far as the best starting language, I feel it's whatever language is best suited for the thing you want to make, though purely from a language analysis perspective, I do really like Java because, while it is not a systems programming language, it is very strongly typed and declarative, and IDEs like Eclipse make getting started extremely easy.
Elm. It is niche -- focused on UI programming. But it would have exposed me to the practice of programming with pure functions much earlier, since the language requires that. I think I would not have tried to avoid programming early in my professional career if I had started with Elm. And I would have had a good base to start from when I learn other languages.
What an interesting choice. Thanks for sharing! I would never have thought about it.
My first contact with coding was HTML, CSS and snippets of JavaScript copied from various coding schools. This was during high school back in 2010 and I did not truly understand what I was doing.
At university I started with C++, which was a real shock to me. Although I try to avoid using C++ professionally, I must appreciate the insight it gave me on how code is executed at lower levels. Then I took courses on Java and Python, but the language I fell in love with was C#. C# is just so beautiful and powerful - it feels like poetry. I quickly gave up on C++, Java and Python (and practically forgot them). They just felt so old, non-intuitive and heavy, compared to C#. I even went so far that during my Android lectures I used Xamarin instead of Java - just to have the pleasure of coding in C#.
Today, I still strongly prefer C#. I do use also JavaScript, because it is literally everywhere. Plus, the new ES standards have transformed it into an actually good language. But I would not change the way I learned languages - going through C++, Java and Python gave me a good perspective for why C# is so cool. I wish more people would appreciate it :)
I started with C# and unfortunately haven't used it since. However the more I learn about Software Development the more I realize that all of the stuff I learned about C# was pretty awesome. I'll have to use it again some day (in love with the JVM right now so we'll see if that happens...).
Major languages I used for significant work [in chronological order)]
Started with c++ and I don't like it, our teacher didn't explain anything and was a mess to understand.
Then VB. Same problem before but I get it fast.
PHP + Html + JavaScript. I love PHP because is easy to understand, is a good "start", I learned to code with this.
I prefer java for a starting language. More robust, strict and POO is important, also C#
I agree, Java is a great choice (especially Java 8/9). I think if more people used a good IDE (like IntelliJ) they wouldn't have as many issues with Java's verbosity. 90%+ of the characters in my code base were read from my mind by the IDE :D
Yes! That's a good point. I started to code with microsoft notepad xD then dreamweaver and later NetBeans and was amazing the change. Now I want to try intelliJ
I wish i could start with c!
But i started with pascal ... yes 3 years ago...
I went the other way round. In fact, I learned C with a book entitled "C for native Pascal speakers". So there was apparently a market for that...