Any programmers out there?

Are there any programmers who could recommend a programming language and/or books for an almost beginner?

I had some Fortran in college years ago, and have written simple Basic programs, but would like to become more proficient/knowledgeable.

C, C++, Python???

Any comments, suggestions?

 

java is probably the most beginner friendly object oriented language.

 

well, my beginning CpE classes have Matlab 6.5. That is about it for now.

 

Depends on your application.

If you want a language to do web based stuff I would go with Java, for hardware I would look at C/C++, and for windows apps I would look at VB.NET.

Essentially whatever language you choose will give you a good basis for writing most other languages, the changes are mostly in the syntax.

For learning material I would suggest first looking on the web for tutorials, there are a LOT of them out there.

 

Hi
First I completely agree with skl-tor.
For core programming I used to use c/c++. Internet pages javascript and vbscript. Internet apps asp.net. Java is also ok, but as I work in Microsoft partner company I primarily use MS tools. If you want to be a programmer see what you want to develop, start reading books/internet and then you will find new questions that need new answers. No language is perfect. All have their good and bad sides. It is better to know first what can you easily do in all those languages and then use them wisely.

 

Assuming that you will be writing run of the mill business apps, Java or .Net(C#/VB) is the way to go.

FYI, VB.Net and C# are both as easy/hard as one another - from personal experience.

 

Thanks for the input!

I forgot to state that I was interested in math/science/engineering type programs.
Also some (simple?) graphing, semi-log. Although a very good program, DPlot already exists for that.

Eventually a GUI for data input would be nice.

 

I am a mainframe COBOL programmer, but if you want a gui, I don't think that there is any easier gui than VB.NET. I had all sorts of programming in college, C++, Java, VB, Client/Server, Assembler, and I would say that VB is one of the nicest environments to do gui in, and it's a little different than a C++/C# or a java, but they are all good for object oriented programming.

Matt

 

Matt

Do you think it would be better to start & learn with VB.net or to learn first with another language (non-GUI) and then switch to VB.net later.

Thanks for your help!

 

When I was in high school the only programming I had was Basic, so when I went to college I took an introduction to programming class and they used Karel the robot. It eases you into functions and it is aimed at starting with C++. Unfortunately I cannot get Karel the robot program downloaded as my student id has long since expired. There is a free C++ compiler that is available that was written by a professor there by the name of Robert Hasker, it is free to download so you could learn that. We also had a deal with Microsoft where we got Microsoft Visual Studio.NET 2003 free, which has C# and java and VB.NET on it, but that costs well over $500 so I would recommend that you start with a C++. Here is the link to download the compiler, HiC:

http://www.uwplatt.edu/csse/Courses/CS143/

Then click on:

Using HiC in Residence Halls, Other Labs, and Off Campus

Once you get your feet wet, all programming structure is pretty much the same. You will have your If statements, nested if's, and loops, counters, constants, variables, functions, and structures. I hope that this helps, Talk to you later!

Matt

 

If you want free C#, VB.NET IDE's for learning just get the Visual Studio Express products, completely free from Microsoft. There is also Visual C++ Express for free, and J#. Allthough J# is based on Java, and fully compatible, it is not platform independent from what I understand, but still perfectly fine for learning.
As several others have stated, it really depends on how far you want to take your programming skills. VB is the easiest to learn, but the C and Java based languages are more powerful. I would go with C# personally, I found that language to be very logical, but then again I had done C-programming before...


http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/default.aspx

 

Well i took programming class all throughout high school and now a good part of college. It seem to chronological order they tend to go with is 1st C++ 2nd Java. I also believe in that system. Since you must understand basic syntax of C++ then you learn security solution offer by java and it's advantages on system independency like PC or Mac.

 

I agree, I started out with C++, then Java, COBOL, VB.NET, and about a million others it seemed like, and I thought it was a very good order to learn the languages. Once you understand functions, it is easier to fully understand and use the full potential of a very graphical and powerful VB.NET.

 

ccbr01 mentioned a good program in his post: Matlab. I'm currently doing a computer engineering degree and for plotting and doing mathematical problems I found matlab to be QUITE useful.

 

MATLAB is the best when you want to do high end stuff, such as math calculations, implementing and testing algorithms, easily creating GUIs, etc. It has a built-in commandline interpreter, great debug tools. But it's not efficient in terms of speed and space. For that - C/C++. Java is very good too in terms of built-in features, GUIs, but also not great for speed.

 

I appreciate the continued input.

I've been researching C (++,#), but will also take a look at MATLAB. It might have good application for what I am wanting to do.

 

For math/science/engineering and other stuff that needs to deal with matrices Matlab is the way to go (MATlab=matrix_lab). It implements all you need in working with matrices (operations like: add, multiply, inverse, eigen values and many more) so you don't have to write them yourself (I belive they are implemented in c/c++; the graphics is made in JAVA). You get a simple (but effective) GUI development tool that helps you create an interface for your script. It comes with many toolboxes (System ID, Wavelet, Neural Nets, Fuzzy Logic, Controll Engineering and more). About efficiency: if you have a decent comp, it runs very good.

To sum it all up: it allows you to focus on your problem (you don't need to concern yourself with the programming). I've been using it for almost four years and it's great (control engineering student).

 

If you are doing mathematical stuff you will find that C has a huge range of prewritten modules and source code for pretty much ever problem under the sun - see http://www.nag.co.uk/. Fortran too, but I wouldn't really use it unless you have to (I did at Uni - shudder...)
There are loads of Java libraries too though.
If you just want to pick up programming I'd go with one of Microsofts express editions, they are pretty good, free (For now...) and there are loads of examples, sample projects and community support. Personally I'd go for VB, but that is just my background. I wouldn't worry about the relative power of the languages argument, if you are running stuff in the .NET framework it isn't an issue, and you probably don't want to be going near unprotected code for a while.
If you are looking at huge mathematical models or writing for any fancy parallel processing hardware then you might need something a bit more low level though.

If you want to do some web based stuff you can either use the visual web express tool from microsoft if you fancy ASP.NET or go with PHP (Which gives you more and cheaper hosting options)
PERL is handy to know about too. A lot of scientific stuff tends to be written as sets of very technical mathematical chunks of code, highly optimised and written in something fairly low level glued together with something that is good at file/string handling and interfaces - quite often PERL or some sort of shell script.

Sorry - slightly rambling. Main thing is that once you learn to program in one thing, new languages come a lot easier, it is just a new syntax. There are some exceptions - some languages have a completely different methodology, going from procedural to object oriented design is a bit of a jump for example.
Oh, and learning SQL is always a good idea.

 

C++ and ASM all the way!

 

Yeah, Matlab 6.5 is installed on all the computers that the College of Engineering own. It's an awesome program. Just started my first program for my semester final.

 

Matlab looked interesting; but a single-user version was priced at $1,900 on their website. That's about $1,700 more than I wanted to spend. Unless someone knows of a cheaper option.

Right know I'm leaning toward C++ and Python to learn on and then branch out from there if necessary.

 

There's the student version of MATLAB, and then there's the student s version, if you know what I mean...

At least that's what my former teacher who taught us the basics of MATLAB used to say.

 

yeah, the student version at my university computer store is only $99