[OT] partialy I was wondering what suggestions for programing

[Bryan Richard]

On Sun, Feb 08, 2004 at 04:33:18AM -0800, Kendrick-LUG wrote:
> I am wanting to get in to programing eventualy posibly drivers etc.  I 
> was wondering if there were any suggestions about where/how to learn the 
> basics ie what a aray is for things of that nature the fundamentals of 
> programing.  

There's a couple of schools of thought about learning to program. One is
that you start low-level and, if you don't get frustrated and quit, once
you get it everything else will seem easy. The high school my wife
taught at in California taught C++ (name of the book was C++ FOR YOU++
;-)). The other is that people should learn a high-level, interpreted
language and gradually drill down from there.

I'm kind of one the fence as there have been times a CS degree would
have served me well but I believe I side with the "introduction to
programming via high-level languages."

> then posibly a good starting language.  

A solid understanding of /usr/bin/bash is like knowing how to how spell
well; it will serve you well down the road. A quick way to learn bash is
to make it your file manager.

I would look at languages that you can do a number of things with
(executable, interactive prompt, web, &c.), well documented tutorials,
and strong community. Python, Ruby, and Perl are all solid starting points. 

If you choose to go the low-level route, then you can learn more than
you will ever use from the Art of Assembly book
(http://webster.cs.ucr.edu/).

> eventual intrests 
> include perl php c's.   any suggestions are greatly welcome

I don't think I would start with PHP. PHP is interesting and if you
collect languages it's fun to see what happens when a language is built
to solve a single problem (pre-PHP5 and the web) but I don't really
consider it all that practical for work off the web.

- Bryan