Re: How do I start?

bldaves@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
Hi guys. I would like to know how to get into computer programing. May
I join your discussion?


Programming is telling a computer what to do in more or less excruciating detail.
"Low level" languages, like C or C++, frequently require you to do a lot of work to perform a task that's simple to state. The instructions are highly abstracted from what you're actually trying to accomplish because at base, all computers can talk about is numbers. This is somewhat made up for by the languages' libraries, which have pre-made procedures for common tasks, and of course sometimes this detail is appropriate to the program, i.e. writing a device driver.
"High level" languages like Python or perhaps Java are much further removed from the nuts and bolts of what the hardware (or virtual hardware) is doing. It's easy to talk about and manipulate things like strings of text or collections of objects that aren't simple numbers or characters.
It's important to have something that you want to program in mind before you start out. Chances are you don't want to start by writing an OS or device drivers, so I suggest Python: http://www.python.org which is very easy to tell what to do and you can talk about things like images, files or web pages easily, although it still requires more detail than telling a person what to do.
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