[plug] programming

[Derek Fountain]

> Does anyone have some suggestions on where I should start, what I should
> use and information on both? I am in the process of buying a house and I
> am supporting a pregnant wife so I dont think I can justify buying books
> at this stage so any online info would be great.

Perl: powerful and flexible, awful syntax, no native GUI toolkit (and ported 
ones suffer badly in the porting process). Best left on the server or used as 
an administrator's tool.

Tcl/Tk: powerful and flexible, nice syntax, GUI is a delight to work with but 
looks very dated now. Tcl is not quite like other programming languages, 
which might be a bit of a disadvantage if you're hoping to pick up 
"mainstream" skills.

Java: cross platform and widely liked in the industry. Much lower level than 
it needs to be and the GUI stuff is a total mess - quite frightening even to 
the experienced. You also need to understand the workings on the VM on your 
platform of choice (which I assume is Linux). Java VM error messages always 
perplex me...

C: flexible, fast and ultimately the most powerful. Widely liked and loved, 
but it's too low level for a beginner to bother with these days unless system 
programming is the goal.

Python: high level and easy to learn. Object oriented, which isn't always a 
good thing, despite what a lot of people in the industry would have you 
believe. No native GUI toolkit, but the Qt based Py/Qt is an excellent choice 
if you're looking at developing free software.

My advice, since you asked ;o), is go with Python, then learn Py/Qt. Python is 
easy to learn and there are lots of resources for it on the web. A book is 
always easier than web pages though, and there are lots of Python books out 
there. It's modern, fast, readable, cross platform and very well respected. 
The jump down to C++ or Java would follow quite easily once you know the 
concepts behind Python.

-- 
> eatapple
core dump

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