I want to take this summer to learn a programming language so I can go into next semester with more certainty in what I want to do for the rest of my life. The only problem is, I don't really know where to start. I downloaded a freeware program called Camstudio which records whatever you're doing on your computer. The guy who created it said it was just a project he did in his free time, and the fact that he did it with C++ just amazed me. It really got me interested in programming. I tried to do research onto what programming languages do what, but I've thus far been unsuccessful. For example, I still don't know the difference from C++ and Java. With the knowledge I get, things I'd be interested in doing are: -Creating little, useful programs -Possibly web design (I someday hope to have a very successful blog or website) I know that, since I mentioned web design, people will be pointing me in the direction of HTML and SQL (what's SQL and php, anyway?). But when I was talking with a table tennis student of my friend who happens to be a programmer, he said that with a programming knowledge, web design was a possible career. However, he said that things like HTML were not programming languages. I was really confused. And, if it'd be too hard to answer on here, if anyone could refer me to a website that gives a really detailed explanation on any language, that'd be great. I know that this post is all jumbled up and such, but if you have any further questions about my questions, I'll be happy to answer! Thanks a lot for your time and this is a great board.
Here are some good links for you: www.computing.dcu.ie/~renaat/projects/cvjava.html www.w3sys.com/pages.meta/benchmarks.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PHP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQL Read these, you get some answers for your questions. Basically, most of us start programming with C, it teaches us the basic constructs used in programming, like conditional structures, loops, etc. Do keep us posted about your progress!
Hey pradeep. Thanks a lot for your response. I'm actually going to learn C my next semester at school, but while talking to my friend's programmer student when I asked him about C++, he said it's actually easier to learn C++ without learning C (what's your opinion on this statement?) Looking at the first two links you posted up, with all of this fuss about the compiler timing of each program, I'm assuming that C++ and Java are fairly similar in what they're capable of doing, right? At this time in the industry, what's used more: Java or C++? As a sort of outsider looking in, the two wikipedia pages you posted up are hard for me to understand. To generalize the rambling of my posts, I'll ask these questions: -How does knowledge of the major programming languages (Java, C++, any others I don't know about?) translate into web design knowledge? To give an example of why I'm asking these questions, the student that I've been talking about throughout this post told me that he was fluent in C++ and Java. Yet, he was telling me stories about how in the early 90's, if he and some colleagues wanted to learn some new coding, they'd steal some from pornography sites because they always seemed to be on the cutting edge of coding (no lie, a real story he told me). When I asked him about HTML and he told me that HTML is not actually a programming language, I became confused about what coding he was stealing. To top it off, any time I've ever asked the question "what jobs are available to computer programmers?" many people have given me the response of web design. I always thought that web design fell under the idea of HTML and all that, so I'm still unclear of how learning computer programming could fall into web design. If I'm wrong about what I believe, please, point me in the right direction. I do want to learn some sort of programming language since I love computers and the idea of making my own little personal programs fascinates me, but the reason I keep bringing up web design is because I want to be productive with my time this summer and creating a webpage is definitely being productive in my opinion. I figure if I could learn a language that can help me in web design AND creating little useful programs, then hey, that's the language that I'm going to dedicate myself to this summer. Not sure if I'm making sense or if I'm just rambling, so if you need clarification when answering, just ask. Thanks!
