Good Starter Language? (was Re: REALBasic and OpenAL)

[Jonathan Hutchins]

On Thursday 31 March 2005 10:00 pm, Jim Herrmann wrote:
> Jonathan Hutchins wrote:

> >People have been writing code for PC's in C now for a
> >couple of decades, and it doesn't look like someone's going to suddenly
> > sweep it all away with some new fad.  If you understand C, you'll
> > understand most of the OS coding projects that are around today.

> Would you say the same about COBOL?  

Yes, but while C is the language of choice on PC's, which are the platform of 
choice for new directions in computing, COBOL is a legacy language that is 
mostly used on older, existing installations as opposed to new development.  
There will continue to be a place for COBOL programs for many years to come, 
and it's probably not a bad career move to learn it.

On the other hand, you're not likely to get into a programming career where 
you get to do anything new and interesting in COBOL, while you are likely to 
if you know C and some of it's variants.  COBOL's coding practices are pretty 
much obsolete when it comes to modern computer platforms, while C is used for 
everything from microdevices to computers like Blue Gene.

As far as Ruby and Python go:  My first programming language was APL.  It's an 
amazing application of symbolic logic that can reduce a  three-page BASIC 
program to three lines of code (split into three lines mostly for 
readability).  Entire multi-million-dollar, multi-story computing centers 
were built around the hardware that was specially designed to run it (IBM's 
360/370 series).  One of the first portable comuters was built to run it.

How many people are programming in APL today?

(Besides APL, I speak BASIC, Fortran77, COBOL, RPG II, System 370 Assembler, 
and a few other choice, obsolete nuggets.  Which is one reason I'm a 
sysadmin, not a coder.)