Programming - Where to start?

[Mac the Knife]

Start here - Computer Programming Fundamentals: Basic Concepts of All Programming Computer Languages | Suite101.com

Download QBasic from http://www.petesqbsite.com/sections/...n/qbasic11.zip

Read the Intro - http://www.petesqbsite.com/sections/...on/intro.shtml - and go on from there. Write programs and learn the basics

Sheesh - you guys want to make it so complicated!

Mac

Assembler my foot!

[Mr Optimistic]

Sheesh - you guys want to make it so complicated!

If I was useful do you think I would be sitting here posting in this forum ?

Assembler my foot!

Ah, a new one, see

http://www.pprune.org/jet-blast/4721...l-sayings.html

[Gomrath]

For that reason, I'd recommend using MS Windows, with whatever version of MS Visual Studio (VS) you can get hold of. That will give you options of using C/C++/VB/C-Sharp etc. More importantly, in the non-free versions, you get the best integrated editing/debugging/integrated help system on the market.

Already suggested The Express Editions are perfect for him. Why go spending a significant amount of money on the full blown suite of Visual Studio which for him as a newbie really gives him nothing extra that he would need to put that first toe in the water... He is hardly going to have a MSDN license is he..

Get Visual Studio (the free version is rather limited)

No it is not. It is perfect for his first foray into programming.

[MG23]

Originally Posted by green granite

If you want real performance you use Machine code for the absolute fastest or Assembler as second fastest executing code

These days a compiler is likely to produce better code than an average assembler programmer unless you can use special instructions that the compiler won't generate (e.g. AES-NI). Otherwise there are so many different special cases for instruction scheduling that the compiler is more likely to get it right than a programmer who hasn't invested the time to learn about them.

More on topic, I'd agree with the others who've suggested downloading the free versions of Visual Studio; I haven't used them in a few years, but the older versions did just about everything that I needed to on Windows. For more arcane languages, Linux probably has a free compiler.

Right now Java and C# seem to be the big languages for PC development, with C++ declining. All three are fairly similar, but C++ is far more verbose and slower to compile... the upside is better performance when the program is running, but PCs are so fast these days that often you won't even notice.

[osmosis]

In another life I found some SIGS, special interest groups, in various areas of computing in the 1990's. They were a little hard to find and were almost underground but they were thriving if you could find them. Interestingly, their members were nearly all mature age folk who had found where they wanted to be with their interests. From these groups, you will find a path. Further, short courses at technical colleges may be of interest, was for me.

[bnt]

Just to bring this up - there's new service designed to get people programming step-by-step, starting from scratch. They say they'll send a weekly email with lessons, tips etc. Code Year

[jcbmack]

java

If you want to employ OOP go with java