[OT] partialy I was wondering what suggestions for programing

[Leo J Mauler]

On Sun, 08 Feb 2004 04:33:18 -0800 Kendrick-LUG <kulua at linux2themax.com>
writes:
> 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.  then 
> posibly a good starting language.  eventual 
> intrests include perl php c's.   any suggestions 
> are greatly welcome

If you want to learn programming (I'm presuming you already have at least
one Linux computer at home), then you'll want to buy yourself a beginning
programming book.  Something that covers the basics (algorithms,
structured programming, etc.).  You can find such books in used
bookstores with computer sections for cheap, the Bargain Books section at
MicroCenter (93rd & Metcalf in Overland Park), yard sales in Lawrence,
and even the Lawrence Public Library Annual Book Sale at the beginning of
October (check with them for times & dates).

Once you've found a book which covers the basics (and believe me, you
want to learn the basics before diving into actual code), you can explore
books which cover teaching programming in a specific language.  A good
starting language is Pascal, and there is an implementation of it for
Linux (and other OSes?) called FreePascal.  Don't learn BASIC, you'll
spend years trying to UNlearn BASIC.  :)  As with the basic concepts of
programming book, you will probably find books on Pascal in the bargain
books sections of computer stores or regular bookstores.

Finally you can start looking into books which teach programming in C. 
While there are newer versions of C, including extended C languages such
as C++ and C#, you might as well cover the ANSI C standard first.  ANSI
(American National Standards Institute) C is the basic level of the C
language without all the fancy includes and specialist libraries.

Or you can branch in a different direction and use an interpreted
language like Perl.  Books for Perl abound, though you might find them a
little more expensive as Perl hasn't been around as long as Pascal or C. 
Then again, you might get lucky at the Lawrence Public Library Annual
Book Sale (like I did), or you might know someone in O'Reilly who can
send you "promotional copies" (also like I did, ain't tellin who) of
Learning Perl and Programming Perl.  Or some UNIX guy just died and you
can pry his old Perl book out of his cold dead hands. :)

Thats the thing really: if you can afford them, even secondhand or older
editions, get O'Reilly Books for your Learning Programming needs.  They
cover the material in ways which other books strain to emulate.

Then if you really want to go off the deep end, you can get into
programming LISP, a programming language designed for A.I. applications
(a computer science professor at KU once wrote a spreadsheet in LISP for
his son, only people who have written in LISP know why this is funny), or
 FORTH (Go Stack! Go Stack!).

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