10 replies to this topic

[Oigen]

Are there any free programing languages out there? Some that are easy to learn, and can compile my code without giving me stupid errors?

[MeTh0Dz]

What? You don't have to pay for programming langauges.

C
C++
Java
Lisp
Scheme
FORTRAN
brainf*ck
C#
VB
Python
Perl
Ruby
Flash ActionScript
etc.

[v0id]

You'll sometimes have to pay for certain compilers, interpreters, editors, or alike but you don't have to pay for programming languages, like MeTh0Dz mentioned above.

[chili5]

Some compilers, you might have to pay for, but all programming languages are free.

All of them are easy to learn, if you have the patience to learn the language. :D

[MeTh0Dz]

I would say Assembly is definitely not easy for everyone to learn.

[chili5]

Not everyone, can learn it easily but I'm guessing that everyone doesn't need to learn assembly. Ex. hobbyists

I don't know what assembly is for, but I looked it up on wikipedia and it looks complex.

[MeTh0Dz]

If you don't know what assembly is for, then you probably need to do some reading about it. It will help you actually understand what you are doing when you program.

[v0id]

I don't actually think Assembly is hard to learn as long as one has patience. Assembly has a reputation of being a hard language to learn, and that's often because people are getting scared away by the many hundreds of instructions Assembly has. But if you have an open mind, then learning the core-elements of Assembly isn't hard. With the core-elements I mean how the stack works, addressing, instructions and their operands, etc. and eventually also some more assembler-dependent things like macros.

So, learning the language isn't hard, but it's true that it can be hard to use in the real world. Questions like, you may not know the instruction you need, there may be a better instruction, which instructions are faster to use and so on quickly appear, but luckily you can look up in manuals, instruction set reference and so on, and get information. Personally do I always keep both a copy of the AMD and Intel manuals (on other architectures one would of course have the manuals fitting to the particular architecture).

[Sonolin]

As others have mentioned, there are many programming languages out there you can learn. I would have to say that certain languages are definitely easier than others, for example a scripting language would be easier than a low-level language like C or Assembly.

My recommendation if you want a general purpose, high-level, easy to learn language: Python. Some do not like the syntax, but I believe it is great especially for beginners as it helps keep newbies' code cleaner (for example, my first real PHP script had all kinds of indentation problems, and security issues, because I was lazy.. Python won't let you have indentation problems).

However, if you are in need of more speed and a language that can pretty much do anything than I recommend C/C++ - these languages are harder for a beginner to learn, however. The advantage of learning these first though, mean that you have good knowledge of how a program actually works (Python automatically passes references/pointers to functions, and handles a lot of garbage collection.. it is also not statically typed like C/C++)

Really what you want to learn is how to think like a programmer, not necessarily master a language (if you are a beginner), so any language will work really. Play around with lots of languages, and when you find a comfortable language, stick with it and when you have a feel for the basics of programming (not necessarily the language, programming) you can move on to other languages depending on your needs.

Hope this helps!

--Michael

[Chewie]

C++ ftw!

[ailema]

well i think this guys here are giving you those good sources you should try them all