[ILUG] introduction to programming

[P at draigBrady.com]

Kevin Philp wrote:
> On Tuesday 24 May 2005 11:13, James McCarthy wrote:
> 
>>does anyone have any idea's about the best way of introducing nebies
>>to programming (on linux)?
> 
> 
> A difficult question and one likely to cause flame wars. So here is my 
> tuppence worth.
> 
> I began on Northstar Extended Basic around 1980. It was horrible, Basic has 
> improved but is still horrible. A lot of colleges use Visual Basic (WHY!!). 
> Don't start with BASIC.

Here here. I learned C first, then did a large VB project
for a couple of years. I can honestly say that I learned
absolutely nothing from programming in VB. It was thouroughly
frustrating. If I'd only known about python at the time...

> For learning I would also avoid languages that make you look after your own 
> memory, so I would avoid C and C++. If you become a games programmer or 
> Kernel hacker you will need to learn them but avoid them for starters.

Hmm I'm not sure about that. Python and most Linux are written in C.
And C is very easy to learn to be honest. A couple of days and
you should be able to write something significant. Do stay away
from C++ though, there be dragons.

Do have something concrete to do before you start learning though.
If you can't find/think of something yourself, then you could
restort to a tutorial: http://www.awaretek.com/tutorials.html

-- 
Pádraig Brady - http://www.pixelbeat.org
--- Following generated by rotagator ---

User management on redhat 9 at least has the
following tools, going from high level to low level:

redhat-config-users
   user{add,mod,del}
     vipw

redhat-config-users
   group{add,mod,del}
     vigr
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