What programming language should i learn first to be a software engineer (14)?

Question

Im a 14 nearly 15 year old game artist. Game art is my passion but i really am learning towards programming because i know software engineers make quite a bit more than artist, and i dont want to have a cap on my earning potential when i get to be an adult. ( artist make a max of about 50k while programmers can range 50-200k+).

So what is a good programming language to learn first to get into software engineering or rather to practice at my young age? I hear c++ is the standard but i also hear it is quite difficult to start off with, even more so with someone my age.

Answer 1

C++ is a difficult language to learn. Although it is not essential to learn C first I would advise you start with it because as a language it is a lot more compact and easier to learn.



This book [1] was co-authored by the creator of C so you can't gain any more insight than that. Amazon has a look inside feature, take a look at the writing style and see if it is easy for you to follow.



I would start with C and once you are confident in it then move on to C++. Like I said many people will say you don't have to learn C first and that is true but personally after trying to learn C++ and failing, after learning C and going back to C++ I found it a lot easier. Knowing the origins of the language, and the restraints of it's predecessor helped me understand some of the more annoying features of C++ and why they were introduced in the first place. So I would start with C and then move on to C++ which I would recommend using this book [2] for it which again you can look inside before you buy to see what it's like.



It is worth noting that if you absolutely don't want to spend any money, then you can, there are plenty of online resources available for free. Personally I never found them useful and their quality varies wildly.

Answer 2

Follow your heart. If game art is your passion, be a game artist.

Answer 3

try to make simple java apps, with eclipse or netbeans as developer tool.

in my opinion it's one of the easiest languages to start with, and there are a lot of tutorials available online.