Re: Good books for a complete beginner!

On 2005-08-31, potnisanish@xxxxxxxxx penned:
> I am aiming to learn a programming language, I don't really care
> about Flash. And since you wouldn't really reccommend java as a
> beginning language, would BASIC be good?

It's a lot easier to follow these threads if you quote the person to
whom you're responding ...

Anyway, assuming you're responding to me ... I never really programmed
in BASIC, but no, I think BASIC would probably teach you some bad
habits.

I have this theory that using PHP as a shell script would be a good
first language, but I can't prove it. You might argue that PHP
doesn't have GUI features, and I would claim that that's partly the
point. But the last time I tried to use PHP's OO features, I was
terribly disappointed. That was in PHP 4.

Python allows you to create objects on the fly using the interpreter,
so that might be an interesting way to learn to program. Very
different from the way most of us learned.

If you do pursue Java as your first language, I'm sure you'll do fine.
I would follow the advice others have given many times on this group
and avoid dealing with the GUI side of things until after I had a
strong understanding of OO as perpetrated by Java.


--
monique

Ask smart questions, get good answers:
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
.

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