What does everybody recommend a newbie programmer?

[jaydee]

What do you think of Microsoft's VC++? Any good? What else is there? Looking for Visual C++, until persuaded otherwise.

(can't get link to work)

 

[FOBSIDE]

that link leads to nothing. if you want to learn C++ and want visual C++ i suggest you have someone in college buy it for you because they usually get student software rates.

i would recommend perl as a first programming language actually so you can program cgi-scripts. while it may not be the best first language to learn, it does enable you to see the fruits of your work quickly and thats always encouraging.

 

[rnimz]

I would say try and learn Java first, I think it is the best language to start off with and will get you right into the object oriented way of doing things, plus it is the most organized lanuage I have worked with, you can download for free the java command line comiler or get a third party one (I recomend Visual Cafe'). Try going to java.sun.com and see, there is also an online tutorial for java, and the entire language is documented, and is available for free from sun. If you want to learn an object oriented language java is the way to go all the way. (warning, I am a fan of java). Good luck in whatever you do.

-Reid

 

[jaydee]

Thanks a lot guys, I'm kinda undecided still though. Looking for more suggestions. Oh yeah, I'm looking for something to run in Linux as well if possible.

 

[BCYL]

Linux has GNU C/C++ compiler built-in, so if you are only doing C++ you dont need to purchase any additional software to start... As for java, JavaSoft has free java development kit for download...

I recommend starting with C++... it would be harder than starting with other languages, but it's object-oriented... Java actually do a lot of stuff for you, whereas in C++ u have to do them urself... But that means if u learn Java first it's harder to switch back to C++... On the other hand, if u already know C++ it will take u no time to do Java... Seeing that the industry still uses C++ quite a bit and java is not that popular now (but it's getting there), I say that's quite important... just my opinion...

 

[BFG10K]

MS Visual C++ is great. You should learn C++ first because learning Java later is really easy. Going the other way (Java -> C++) is much harder.

 

[mjquilly]

And I'd reccomend NOT learning Visual C++ before leaning straight up C++.