[oclug] Easiest and most usefull language to learn?

[Ian Wormsbecker]

I have to disagree. I think C++ is a good programming language to learn
first. You don't have to get into inheritance and templates, etc. until
later on. Use c++ for the many good things it offers to learn first.
Things like strings as apposed to char *. List and vector instead of
malloc/realloc. These things will allow you to write code without having
to worry about implementation details of many things. When you want to
know how to really program, go back and learn how List is implemented, or
string, or inheritance, or templates.   In order to learn to program you
need to first understand basic concepts. Things like looping,
comparisons, flow control, functions. You can learn all these in C++
without having to worry about getting seg faults because you didn't check
if strncpy appended a NULL terminating character or not. I think this is
one of the benefits of C++ for a new learner, you can use string and save
yourself a whole lot of troubles. Once you understand the basics of
programming (if/else, for, while, do while, switch, functions) then you
can move on to more advanced things, be it in C, C++, Pascal, Smalltalk,
Java.