Would Computer Engineering hold me back in becoming a programmer?

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Gizmo j

Golden Member
Nov 9, 2013
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I know I asked this before but what are the most important programing languages to learn first?

I heard its HTML....is this true?
 

Markbnj

Elite Member <br>Moderator Emeritus
Moderator
Sep 16, 2005
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www.markbetz.net
I know I asked this before but what are the most important programing languages to learn first?

I heard its HTML....is this true?

Well HTML is not a programming language. It's a structured markup syntax for specifying (along with CSS styles) what a web page should look like. A web page typically consists of HTML that is modified on the server before being sent to the client, and then on the client is further modified by javascript running in the browser. It's hard to visualize all this until you start doing it.

So in the browser you write javascript, and you can begin learning the basics by writing a simple HTML "hello world" type of page and then writing some simple javascript to do things to it in the browser. That's a reasonable way to start.

On the server the HTML for a page is either generated by code in the server, or a template is loaded from disk and then modified, or in some cases all that is sent back is the static page and all the rest of the app is browser javascript. You can write server-side code in javascript now, using node.js, and you could also choose python, java, Go, etc. These are all more or less open source and very accessible, but it will take you some time to figure out how it all fits together.
 

Belegost

Golden Member
Feb 20, 2001
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I know I asked this before but what are the most important programing languages to learn first?

I heard its HTML....is this true?

I would not recommend starting with HTML as it's not really a programming language, and not terribly instructive.

My suggestion these days would probably be Python. It provides a nice place to start with a not overly heavy syntax, a focus on high readability, and is fairly up-to-date. It would be a good place to get a foundation in basic programming concepts.