What programming languages should i learn?

Question

I'm only 14 and i don't know ANYTHING about programming but i would love to learn programming. I want to learn the VERY basics and fundamentals of it. If I start learning now I would be starting from scratch. I am a total newbie so which language would suit me best ? Also, does anybody know a website where they offer free tutorials of different languages ? I only know HTML.
And,what P/languages can be used to program basic applications like a calculator.
And, what languages can be used to program simple 2D games like pong or pacman?

Answer 1

Depends on what you want to program. Some languages, like Java, are designed (mostly) for use on the Internet, While other languages like C (C+, C++) are designed for creating stand alone applications. Other languages like Python or Perl are used exclusively in web creation to supplement HTML. So what language you want to learn will depend on what you plan to do with it.



If I had to recommend one language, I would probably go with Java. (Note that Java is NOT the same as JavaScript, they are two very different things that just happen to have the word "java" as part of their names.) It is a full featured language, based on the C syntax, that allows you to design applications that will run on the web or to design stand alone applications.



While every language has different syntax (how you word the commands), they are all build on the same programming concepts. What you will learn by studying Java will enable you to understand any other language. You just would need to reference exactly on a command is worded in that other language.



Java would enable you to create a game like Pong or PacMan. Both were originally written in the C language. However if you are interested in creating games, you might want to "google" for "game engine". Most games are NOT written in one of the standard programming languages, but are created in "game engines". These are special programming environments where they have already written much of the code for you (code to move/animate objects, detect "hits", set background, keep scores, etc.) Even the professional game makers normally do not code in a standard language but use a game engine.

Answer 2

Seconded, Python is the best entry-level programming language. It's really easy to learn and almost like speaking English. Python has great documentation too! You almost don't need tutorials to learn. You can get it here: http://python.org/

I recommend using iPython to learn because IDLE kinda sucks. Get it here: http://ipython.scipy.org/moin/

Install ipython after installing python.

You can also generate HTML stuff easily using Python! It takes like 5 minutes to generate HTML tables from a big set of data when you get the hang of it.



However, Python is really basic and quite hard to do visual stuff. After that you might want to learn Visual Basic or Flash ActionScript. Visual Basic is pretty basic object-oriented programming; you can make buttons and stuff. Making things like simple calculators is really easy on BASIC. Flash is great because it's mainly for animations. But it's kinda hard to get into and sometimes it does things you might not understand why/how. Many amazing games were made on Flash, and some even ascended to greater releases! (e.g. Meat Boy --> Super Meat Boy, although Super Meat Boy isn't on Flash).



Edit: And yeah, it's really easy to look for tutorials now that we have Google. Python tutorials can be found on the first answer's link. I recommend going to Kongregate.com to look for Flash tutorials. They have quite a bunch of Flash tutorials.. on Flash!

Answer 3

It isn't that easy to 'just' program a game or calculator.. Perhaps you should start with BASIC, it's a really easy programming language. When you're more experienced, or you want to start with a very hard P/language, learn C++, C# or Java. Just use Google to find tutorials ;)

BASIC looks like this:

10 INPUT "What is your name: ", U$

20 PRINT "Hello "; U$

30 INPUT "How many stars do you want: ", N

40 S$ = ""

50 FOR I = 1 TO N

60 S$ = S$ + "*"

70 NEXT I

80 PRINT S$

90 INPUT "Do you want more stars? ", A$

100 IF LEN(A$) = 0 THEN GOTO 90

110 A$ = LEFT$(A$, 1)

120 IF A$ = "Y" OR A$ = "y" THEN GOTO 30

130 PRINT "Goodbye "; U$

140 END



C++ is like this:



Multiply a number by a power



#include

using namespace std;

int main()

{

int number,power,count,i;



cout << "Enter Number: "; cin >> number;

cout << "Enter the power: "; cin >> power;



count = 1;

for (i=1; i <=power; i++)

count = count*number;



cout << count << endl;



return 0;

}

Answer 4

If you want to develop websites then I recommend learning PHP and the database MySQL. Search the web for "PHP tutorial".

Answer 5

i highly recommand python

http://docs.python.org/tutorial/