I am currently studying a Bachelor of Software Engineering and have repeatedly been told conflicting stories as to the best first Programming language to learn.

I have been told everything from Java to C++, VisualBasic to Python. I was wondering if there was any self-proclaimed experts who might be able to tell me what they believe is best and give a decent reason for it.

I already am reasonably talented in Java, VB and am teaching myself C++ and Python as well as doing some simple assembly language stuff.

Anyway bassically what i'd like to know is what YOU started on and how it served you in your future

i started in C first

God! It's been so long ago!
First was 1800 series RCA assembly.
Second was Signetics 2650 assembly.
Third my team wrote a high level for use in controls.
Then the 8080 and the associated op sys.
Then the 6800.
Then the 6809 and Flex and OS9, along with ANSII C.
Then Basic09.
Then Basic.
Then....
Having some years of experience in teaching, and many years in industry (where I gained most of my learning as practically necessary), I think the basics are best first, especially if the processor has all the addressing forms and data forms. So I'd vote for assembly on a more advanced cpu than such things as 8085 based devices, but not up to Pentium class; perhaps the stone age 68000 would be good. Reason being that to really know what's going on, how the cpu and associated support ICs is kind of necessary, unless one is doing nothing more than high level language for Microsoft et al.
My game is control systems, and it's necessary to do all that stuff, which is why there are so many assy languages listed, and a lot more than are listed. However, I've found that once one assy lang is known and loved, others come a whole lot easier, as do even the more esoteric high level langs like C. I think the main difference I've found is going from more conventional cpus to DSPs. Although that wasn't particularly difficult since I was on a design team that did one of the first DSPs, though we didn't know it at the time.
God, how I run on. I'll shut up now.

What programming language you want to work with, depends on what you want to program.

for applications I'd use C# or Visual Basic. [VB.NET]
for games C++, but have been told that C# is awesome for game dev as well

Visual basic is good for games too

I don't know about VB.NET but VB6 was really bad for writing games. I used to do it and regret every second I spent wasting time when I could have been learning c++.

If you like it well,
What games do you write/have you written?

right now i'm working on a pac man game

http://www.byond.com

1 hour max to learn the essentials, and it comes with in-built networking support. Incredibly useful if your thinking of making, say, a mmorpg or another similar multiplayer game.

* started way, way back in 8086 assembler *

I'd recommend Microsoft's XNA and C# which will enable you to develop games that will run on the xbox 360 and the PC.

You know you want to.

It's not which one but how many. So you are on the right path.

I learned Basic, Cobol, Assembler, and Fortran in school. The Basic got my foot in the door. But I have been programming in a 4GL language for 15 years that has nothing to do with any particular language I learned in school. Basically you need to learn "how" to "program". A series of logical thinking. Many many people can do it. They just don't think logically and can't think in terms of a program. The more languages you know will give you a breadth of knowledge that could get your foot in the door. Provided that you can actually code.

this is for programming in gaming?
i thought programming was for the whol computer " computer programming for a company or a original system to program yourself , i dont think i can help much im a adam girl wyse unix lotus data processing and old dos commands for an older model computer , my personal computer is a microsoft xp , some are se98 and 2000 but unix systems are what im more familar with you know accounting programs which i hated doing but i was a purchaser and head of personel and advertising assistant ,. all in which i had to develope a new program for others to collaborate and work as a system and the one i was most familiar with was the wwef workwise program .but like i said this was company programming . sorry



autocab and vise are a little bit more for graphics for like boards engineering
i personaly like vise but still dont know if any one knows what the heck im talking about.
cause its been a long long time . whoops thats for drafting i forgot

i started with visual basic 3.0

i self taught myself as well.....


because i was able to self teach myself visual basic, at the age of 13, with no outside help besides looking at other code, i say visual basic is the easiest langauge to learn first.

I failed a visual basic class that I need to take over again after christmas.. I might be looking here for help.

Yeah I suck at programming.

it takes time to learn, its just like any spoken language, once you learn the fundamentals, the rest comes a lot easier

not for me, i guess i have a knack for learning programming languages

How did you learn?

i just look at code examples and read a book

That's pretty impressive.



I hope that's true, I've always wanted to try and learn some programming.

it takes time to learn wether you want to admit it or not, you cant crack open a book and look at code and just all of a sudden be fluent. knowing and understanding are not necesarily the same thing

It's great fun, once you know what your doing: before that, it can be extremely frustrating.

If you want to learn a language you can use for many things as well as game programming then I recommend learning either C++ or C#. I am currently a Java programmer and have been able to make Java sing but I consider Java a somewhat incomplete language so I wouldn't recommend it if you are starting out and have the luxury to pick your primary language. By incomplete I mean that Java is great for business type applications but as far as high performance and memory intensive applications or highly graphical applications it isn't the best in my humble opinion. C# on the other hand has better potential (you still have to be a little careful how you program) memory management than Java. Performance in C# is very good not as good as C++ or C but overall it is better than Java again there are exceptions to every rule by this I mean the latest version of Java has very good performance in some areas but overall C# is still better and the garbage collector works very well. Also in C# you have structs which is important in memory intensive applications since structs are removed nearly immediately from memory when they are no longer being used within an application. Also Mono is taking off and so the chances are that most anything you create in C# will run on linux, you may have to make minor modifications but it should run. I have learned and used C# myself and it is the best language I have used to date overall.