HELP! Must choose language!

[Martin Christensen]

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>>>>> "Nick" == Nick Vargish <nav at adams.patriot.net> writes:
Nick> So, if you are getting into this for a career, I think you
Nick> should start with C, which can be learned in a couple of
Nick> weeks. Then move to C++ once you have a grasp of memory handling
Nick> in C, because that's a complicated and dangerous aspect of both
Nick> C/C++, and the most critical to learn if you're going to be a
Nick> professional.

I don't agree with you. In essence you're suggestion that he start
learning _languages_, but what he really needs, especially considering
that he's a 9th grader, is to learn _programming_ as a mental
discipline and technique. It might be the case that currently
(historically) C and C++ are very popular languages for getting work
done, more out of convention than for any practical reasons, I
suspect, and as such they're useful languages. If my experience counts
for anything, those who have C(++) (and for different reasons also
PHP, VisualBasic etc.) for a first language far more often turn out
being just coders as opposed to real programmers. By this I mean that
'just coders' have all the bad habits that come from the union of
short-sightedness and pragmatism ("wow, I'm coding, I'm so 1337!"),
whereas 'real programmers' solve problems in their heads before they
do so in code, at least partially.

Python and other high-level general-purpose languages better allow
novices to focus on the actual problem solving, where in C(++) they
tend to worry more about how to initialise an array correctly, or mess
around with semi-incomprehensible semantics. C++ was my second
language after BASIC, and I think that this was a major contributing
factor to why I didn't 'get' programming until long after I'd learned
how to code: when every line of code is a struggle, near-sightedness
is an inevitability.

Martin

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