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[Virex]

Maybe you should try a community college on English spelling, Max?


Anyway, Worst thing you can do is get yourself dug in. If one book or language isn't working for you, it might just be that it's not what you're looking for. Don't be afraid to try new languages because many concepts can be carried over from one language to another (assuming you don't do strange things like jump from C to J)

[ILikePie]

C# however, is really nice.

Dear god visual c# with intellisense is dead sexy.

IDEs are icky. But, yeah, Microsoft's stuff is incredible.

[Nadaka]

Once you learn a type programming in one language, you can generally pick up another language of the same type rapidly.

I am a java expert++ and c# expert, proficient but rusty in C, C++, LISP, a couple variants of basic with a smattering of Perl, PHP, Smalltalk, ruby, ADA, fortran and Cobol for good measure.

Java is a great language; fast, safe, easy to learn, platform independent. It just has a few places where you have to fight against it. C# is like java with fewer places to bang your head, but less performance and fewer supported platforms. Both have top notch IDE's available.

I utterly hate ruby. This opinion may be tainted in that I used it in its first year of existence, it may have improved since then.

For the OP, learning how to learn well can be difficult for the self directed. Without knowing more about where you are, I can't really give much specific advice. One thing you might do is research why certain decisions were made about what you can or can not do with a specific language.

[mainiac]

I don't always write code, but when I do, I prefer python.

[Rysith]

Java is a great language; fast, safe, easy to learn, platform independent. It just has a few places where you have to fight against it. C# is like java with fewer places to bang your head, but less performance and fewer supported platforms. Both have top notch IDE's available.

I utterly hate ruby. This opinion may be tainted in that I used it in its first year of existence, it may have improved since then.

I agree with you, but I view learning Ruby as the new equivalent of learning Basic or LISP once upon a time: Not because the language itself is particularly good for doing things in[1], but because it's easy to pick up without as much overhead as something like C[++|#]? or Java. Having learned Ruby, and thus the basics of object oriented programming and program control flow, I'd expect him to be more equipped to deal with something with more power and more syntax, like Java or C#.

[1] Though it has gotten much better, and the existence of JRuby means being able to write what is fundamentally Java code with bits of Ruby on top, which has been nice for a few things that I've done.

[squeakyReaper]

I'm learning to do programming at the moment (I have a good grasp of basics, so I'm in the same boat) and so far, C# has been the easiest to learn.  Use Visualstudio's C# stuff from Microsoft, it is simply the best there is.

[Virex]

I agree with you, but I view learning Ruby as the new equivalent of learning Basic or LISP once upon a time: Not because the language itself is particularly good for doing things in[1], but because it's easy to pick up without as much overhead as something like C[++|#]?

I've been diving into Common Lisp lately and while I would agree that picking up the basics is pretty easy, there are some things in the language that take at least as much time to pick up as the advanced topics in C/C# (hell, there's even quite a lot of overlap between lisp's anonymous functions and C#'s delegates, but that aside). I wouldn't be surprised if there are some advanced topics in Ruby as well, that while not exactly necessary for simple programs, add quite some power to the language.* At least for the other popular "easy to pick up" language, python, I know there are some advanced tricks that can't be found in "more advanced" languages like C++.


*Note that the power of a language is something different from it's intrinsic speed, at least in my view. It's how easy it's to express advanced concepts in the language. Take for example list comprehension. Python (and Lisp, but I won't bother you further with that language) has advanced list comprehension built in that allows you to for example apply a function to all elements in a list (there are even multiple ways to do that). In C, you'd have to write your own list walker or something and if you'd want to generalize it you'd have to work with function pointers, which is a bit of a roundabout way to do things.

[ILikePie]

I'm learning to do programming at the moment (I have a good grasp of basics, so I'm in the same boat) and so far, C# has been the easiest to learn.  Use Visualstudio's C# stuff from Microsoft, it is simply the best there is.

This how I got into programming, highly recommended.

They say Perl takes the awesome from Lisp, C, Python, sed, AWK, bash, etc. and groups it all together. Perl *is* really cool, especially because of cpan, but I don't know how well it'd work on Windows.
I should really take look at that camel book again.

[Blank Expression]

IDEs are icky.

It's not always easy to tell which programmers you should avoid like the plague, but ones who make statements like this one with that perplexing pride you exhibit are immediately obvious as some of them. Yes, you can write Java in vi, awesome. Nine times out of ten, you'll also be a pain in the ass who bitches about code formatting because your choice of editor is deficient and your code will take longer to develop because you're mentally context-switching between documentation and code. (The other one out of ten will be too busy writing elisp macros to do his job. Hyuk hyuk.) The productivity benefits of even a fairly poor IDE (hello, Eclipse) is something trivially exhibited when you sit somebody--even a vi-head who thinks in eighty column lines--in front of Eclipse or Visual Studio: they get more effective almost immediately. The tools available in any modern IDE are generally unobtrusive until you actually need them, and the "clutter" arguments that intermittently pop up are rather reality-averse.

I mean, heaven forfend you use a tool designed to make doing your job easier. The concept is simply incredible.

[Virex]

The tools available in any modern IDE are generally unobtrusive until you actually need them, and the "clutter" arguments that intermittently pop up are rather reality-averse.

Well, "code wizards" who stick to simple text editors, usually use all kinds of programs to emulate the different parts of a normal IDE, often because they prefer the way those tools work and the flexibility of being able to use multiple tools to how they're implemented in a conventional IDE. Which is of course fine, if you're actually using those external tools properly (or in the case of Emacs, you know your commands and libraries well). Due to the inherent complexity of setting up a popper work space this way and learning to use it, it's probably the last thing you'd want to advice a new programmer to do (Try getting code completion in Vim. Now try explaining someone new to coding how to set it up and use it...). Hell, as you say, many "jaded code veterans" often haven't got things set up properly, and unsurprisingly they're usually the ones who go about telling people how evil IDE's are.

The other part may be a false sense of speed, which seems to be very important for "speed junky coders". You're not faster without an IDE, because you still need compilers, debuggers, version management tools, reference documents et cetera. or you're cutting yourself in the finger. But the idea of not having to use all kinds of clutter makes people think it's faster, just like the argument that Opera would be faster if it didn't include the mailbox, even though the code for the mailbox is only loaded when you need it.

[ILikePie]

It's not always easy to tell which programmers you should avoid like the plague, but ones who make statements like this one with that perplexing pride you exhibit are immediately obvious as some of them. Yes, you can write Java in vi, awesome. Nine times out of ten, you'll also be a pain in the ass who bitches about code formatting because your choice of editor is deficient and your code will take longer to develop because you're mentally context-switching between documentation and code. (The other one out of ten will be too busy writing elisp macros to do his job. Hyuk hyuk.) The productivity benefits of even a fairly poor IDE (hello, Eclipse) is something trivially exhibited when you sit somebody--even a vi-head who thinks in eighty column lines--in front of Eclipse or Visual Studio: they get more effective almost immediately. The tools available in any modern IDE are generally unobtrusive until you actually need them, and the "clutter" arguments that intermittently pop up are rather reality-averse.

Dude, vi? MS Word is where it's at. (-8
I've no problem with using an IDE, it's just that I don't want to download another 70 packages (Eclipse's dependency list is huge.) just so I can use a text editor that auto-completes my variable names, and groups my debugger and compiler messages together in the same window.

[eerr]

It's not always easy to tell which programmers you should avoid like the plague, but ones who make statements like this one with that perplexing pride you exhibit are immediately obvious as some of them. Yes, you can write Java in vi, awesome. Nine times out of ten, you'll also be a pain in the ass who bitches about code formatting because your choice of editor is deficient and your code will take longer to develop because you're mentally context-switching between documentation and code. (The other one out of ten will be too busy writing elisp macros to do his job. Hyuk hyuk.) The productivity benefits of even a fairly poor IDE (hello, Eclipse) is something trivially exhibited when you sit somebody--even a vi-head who thinks in eighty column lines--in front of Eclipse or Visual Studio: they get more effective almost immediately. The tools available in any modern IDE are generally unobtrusive until you actually need them, and the "clutter" arguments that intermittently pop up are rather reality-averse.

Dude, vi? MS Word is where it's at. (-8
I've no problem with using an IDE, it's just that I don't want to download another 70 packages (Eclipse's dependency list is huge.) just so I can use a text editor that auto-completes my variable names, and groups my debugger and compiler messages together in the same window.

You know Eclipse comes in a tightly-bound package these days, right?

[Rysith]

I agree with you, but I view learning Ruby as the new equivalent of learning Basic or LISP once upon a time: Not because the language itself is particularly good for doing things in[1], but because it's easy to pick up without as much overhead as something like C[++|#]?

I've been diving into Common Lisp lately and while I would agree that picking up the basics is pretty easy, there are some things in the language that take at least as much time to pick up as the advanced topics in C/C# (hell, there's even quite a lot of overlap between lisp's anonymous functions and C#'s delegates, but that aside). I wouldn't be surprised if there are some advanced topics in Ruby as well, that while not exactly necessary for simple programs, add quite some power to the language.* At least for the other popular "easy to pick up" language, python, I know there are some advanced tricks that can't be found in "more advanced" languages like C++.


*Note that the power of a language is something different from it's intrinsic speed, at least in my view. It's how easy it's to express advanced concepts in the language. Take for example list comprehension. Python (and Lisp, but I won't bother you further with that language) has advanced list comprehension built in that allows you to for example apply a function to all elements in a list (there are even multiple ways to do that). In C, you'd have to write your own list walker or something and if you'd want to generalize it you'd have to work with function pointers, which is a bit of a roundabout way to do things.

Oh, absolutely. Ruby has advanced features (including its own equivalent of lambdas and map/fold list operations), but you don't need to know them in order to pick up the language, or even to do some decently complicated stuff. C, you basically need to understand pointers (and all the complexity that comes with them) in order to progress to more advanced topics. You can do amazing things in Lisp, so it's not lacking in power or anything[1], but it does a good job of only making you use as much complexity as you need, and thus seems like a good language to pick up programming in.

[1] See, for example, the sets of Lisp macros that turn emacs into an IDE, to contribute to the other thread in this topic

[Blank Expression]

I've no problem with using an IDE, it's just that I don't want to download another 70 packages (Eclipse's dependency list is huge.) just so I can use a text editor that auto-completes my variable names, and groups my debugger and compiler messages together in the same window.

Er...what do you care what packages are downloaded? apt-get install [eclipse|netbeans] and go get a cup of coffee or something.

You're being the guy Virex described, and that's really not a good place to be. :p

[Virex]

I've no problem with using an IDE, it's just that I don't want to download another 70 packages (Eclipse's dependency list is huge.) just so I can use a text editor that auto-completes my variable names, and groups my debugger and compiler messages together in the same window.

Get Code::Blocks then, it's less then 30 megabyte.