Programming Questions for Newbie..
 

I am new to Linux (duh, that's why I'm in this forum) Anyway - I was wondering what prgramming languages should I learn, and in what order.

I'm ready to pour my heart into this OS after several years on the fringes - but I need to be able to manipulate and understand Linux better.

Thanks in advance,
gt

Good that you are taking a plunge...

Frankly, it all depends what you want to do after learning programming languages. If you just want to learn for personal development...start with shell scripting. Shell scripting will help you a lot with system admin and automating various tasks on your system. You can also give perl, python, php a try and then finally crack C. Or you can just start wherever you feel comfortable...it all depends on what you want to do and what you feel comfortable with.

Hope this helps,
Tux,

Re: Programming Questions for Newbie..
 

It all depends on what you want to do and the subject is subject to much debating. There are many programming languages you can use in Linux but the most common ones are Perl, Python, Shell Scripting (Bash in particular), and C.

If you are not familar with programming, I would recommend starting with either Python, Java (it works under Linux but is less common than say Perl or C), or Pascal. C can be daunting to someone who has never programmed before because a lot of stuff that is handled or abstracted in newer, higher-level programming languages is done by the programmer. In C, you have to worry about things like memory management and pointers, which can confuse someone who has never programmed before. C++ is a newer, object-oriented version of C, but it retains the manual memory management and pointers as well as the somewhat unfriendly-to-learners syntax. Most of the time, when you are programming in C++, you are relying on libraries that handle a lot of low-level stuff for you (such as wxWidgets or QT) but it still isn't as easy to learn at first as say Python or Java.

Perl (and I'm going to get flamed for this) is a mix of a bunch of what are called programming paradigms (such as Object-Oriented, Functional and Procederal programming). The result is that, when you know Perl, you can do a lot of things in the language; but that it's hard to understand because there are many ways to do the same thing.