Thread: Which is a better beginner's language

Originally posted by joshdick
If this is for an english assignment, I suggest you consider your audience more thoroughly. Your teacher and classmates most likely will have no clue what you're talking about.

Why? As long as you keep it simple...
Like :'Pascal is easier to use and learn, but C, being more complicated, has got much more possibilites.' Or something like that. I did it.

Pascal is by far the better language for teaching someone how to program. It was after all designed with that very purpose in mind.

Second that. In school I started out with Pascal and I haven't regreted that.

Concepts of coding need to be taught first, without people wondering about pointers and adresses and segmentation faults.

>>I would like to know WHY you think one is better then the other for a beginner.

here's my reasoning for learning them:
writing small batch files - didn't even know what i was doing at the time
HTML - very forgiving
Visual Basic (basics) - part of a high school course leading into programming
C++ - high school programming courses (based on Comp sci AP exam at the time, which are now based on Java)
Javascript - wanted to learn some web scripting, and there was a a javascript book laying around
PHP - probably my next language

here's my reasoning for why they should be first:
writing small batch files - only a few lines of code, very simple
HTML - very forgiving
Visual Basic (basics) - a little more code, but still not too much (until you go deeper)
C++ - easy to learn, mostly code, debuggers help you learn from mistakes