On Sun, Nov 16, 2003 at 08:45:51PM +0800, David Palmer wrote: > > I thought that I might make a beginning at learning.
Good call :) > I've searched the web, found information that goes beyond the definition > of plethora, so I thought that I'd ask here. "Go not to Usenet - for you will be told Yes, No and "try another newsgroup" :) > > (1) What is the best language to start with? > Some say C. Others say C++. > Some say learn C, then go on to C++. If you have to maintain any code you haven't written: C is almost a must. There is a _lot_ of C code out there. C is relatively small: the number of concepts to grasp is smaller than C++ If you need to look at object oriented code in any language: you will probably want to at least get a grounding in C++ -- after C. > Others say go straight to C++, if you learn C first, it's too confusing, > you've got to unlearn too much when you go to C++, so you're better off > starting with it in the first place. They may be right - but, as noted elsewhere, much C++ is written by C programmers who don't necessarily use all the features of C++ anyway. > (2) Perl or Python. This seems to be another divided camp. > What are the capabilities of each? What are the applications of each? Perl - wherever you used to use a shell script, consider Perl. Perl also has concepts from sed and awk. Wherever you have to pattern match which means more than a relatively straightforward grep, consider Perl. Perl is essentially sysadmin glue and text chunking - but a whole lot besides. The reason I say consider perl is because there are times when a four line shell script will do it well. There's More Than One Way To Do It :) Python is a "proper programming language" but I know nothing much more about it to comment. > > I've already decided to use Vim, steep learning curve apparently, but > comprehensive functionality when you get there. Also extended capability > with lots of plugins. If you can use simple vi commands, it may get you out of a lot of trouble :) Andy