Bla where to begin?

[wcoashez]

Hey I'm 18 years old and finishing up highschool. What I was actually wandering is what program language should I learn first? What language(s) are the ones that are most commonly needed when people are looking for programmers to do a job? And just any other information anyone can give me. I'm really into computer and want to program but don't know where to start. I want to program for fun and hoping to make a little bit on the side as well(or if it's good enough maybe a career someday in it completly after I finish college for business Thanks everyone!

[v0id]

What do you want to program?
Games, graphical user interface (GUI), drivers, ...?

And welcome to CodeCall, btw. :-)

[G_Morgan]

I don't actually think it's a good idea starting off with a language especially for industry. The first thing is always to learn to program, then worry about where you might use it. Learning a new language within the same paradigm is a weekend job once you have the basics down (e.g. a C++ programmer isn't going to struggle with Java).

Personally I'd go with Python. It's designed to be easy to get into. Once your confident with that I would worry about more practical stuff. Not that Python isn't practical but it has it's limitations in terms of performance.

The real issue is what platform you are targeting. Python is great on Unix but I'm not sure how good it's Windows libraries are. Then again programming on Windows is a general PITA since MS have done nearly everything in a obscure and clumsy way.

[TcM]

So you never ever programmed anything before? So you have NO Idea about programming?

If that was it I would agree with G_Morgan.. maybe even Pascal.

[John]

I disagree, PHP is an industry programming language and it was my first.

[G_Morgan]

You learned PHP first? My sympathies.

[TcM]

Well my first language was not one of those either (I forgot which was my very first), but I do agree that Pascal or something similar will help people a lot.. It's just that we (me and sidewinder) are geeks (Joking)

[wcoashez]

I'll look into both Pascal and Python and see which I want to start with. I'm trying to get Linux right now on my external harddrive and I accidently formatted my whole hard drive so I lost everything last night... so since that happened any suggestions on which Linux would be be best? Then I heard that I can use my belkin usb network adapter with linux to but I have to download something... I don't know it's alot to go through at once

[TcM]

Lol, what Os you tried to install?

[wcoashez]

Fedora... I got it installed now and have windows still I need to try and figure out how to get internet through my belkin usb network adapter now becaus i read somewhere that I can even though they made it for windows:-/