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blog/2024-02-04-first-language.md
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@ -13,19 +13,20 @@ tags:
hide_table_of_contents: false
---
Let's talk about the first language beginners come into contact with hands
on.
I recall my first-time experience with programming quite vividly and also at the
time of writing this post I have been teaching _Foundations of Programming_ for
5 years already.
Let's talk about the first language beginners come into contact with hands
on[^1].
<!--truncate-->
:::caution Spoiler alert
At one point or another, this post will turn into full-blown Python rant as it
is the most common choice for the first language.
is the most common choice for the first language and not very suitable in my
opinion.
I'm also purposefully leaving out educational “languages” like [Scratch],
[Baltík] or [Imagine].
@ -40,20 +41,21 @@ I'll start with my own journey, so you can take in account any bias that I have.
:::
I will describe my journey by taking two _very_ different paths, self-study and
the high school experience. Self-study path begins just a year or two before the
high school and majority of the time they overlap which certainly creates
a unique experience.
I will describe it by taking two _very_ different paths, self-study and the high
school experience. Self-study path begins just a year or two before the high
school and majority of the time they overlap which certainly creates a unique
experience.
### Self-study
My first time touching a proper programming language was around ‘11 and it was
a VB.NET[^1]. If you have a look at this language, it is a rather verbose
language. However if you understand English, it is very easy to read because of
the said verbosity. When you dig deeper, you may find some very weird stuff
said verbosity. When you dig deeper, you may find some very weird stuff
going on, like indexing of arrays, or even allocating arrays that preallocates
one more or one less[^2] element than the specified size. Syntax is also quite
unusual with apostrophes marking the comments.
unusual with apostrophes marking the comments. You could say each language has
its own peculiarities.
Overall it's not that bad and the book I've had[^3] was rather nice. In
retrospective I would say that VB.NET is very nice first language, because it's
@ -74,14 +76,14 @@ the life of the developers less painful. All in all, there are still many things
that you need to work around in Java by abusing interfaces and design patterns
and some of those things can be done in a very simple way in other languages[^6]
Around the time of attending the high school C appeared in my life… I think I've
seen C for the first time in the lectures from FIT CTU[^7]
After C we have a mayhem of anything and everything.
Around the time of attending the high school, C appeared in my life… I think
I've seen C for the first time in the lectures from FIT CTU[^7]. After C we have
a mayhem of anything and everything.
Looking back I have to admit that I've managed to move from Java towards C# as
the preferred language, though this has not been reflected in my professional
experience (both working and teaching) and I haven't even touched the C#
recently apart from the LeetCode challenges.
recently apart from some LeetCode challenges.
### High school
@ -89,6 +91,20 @@ Pascal
Python
## Common choices
### Python
### JavaScript
### C or C++
### Pascal
## What to look for
## My picks
[scratch]: https://scratch.mit.edu/
[baltík]: https://www.sgpsys.com/infovek/index.htm
[imagine]: https://imagine.input.sk/index.html