Quick questions...

[earthlinkmail]

....you experienced programmers of C; did you start with C? What course
of study did you pursue to get to where you are today? Would you
suggest starting with REALbasic first for a n00b? I am completely new
to programming and using a Mac and would like some input as to where to
begin a career in programming. I know this is probably a somewhat
undefined question, but would appreciate you input/advice. Thanks.

[Skarmander]

Walter Roberson wrote:

In article <11************ *********@o13g2 000cwo.googlegr oups.com>,
<ea***********@ earthlink.net> wrote:

<snip>

Would you suggest starting with REALbasic first for a n00b?

No! BASIC sets too many bad habits.

No more than most other languages. Modern Basics really don't resemble
their GOTO-based predecessors of yore, but have all the trappings of
structured languages. REALBasic in particular is an O-O language that's
nothing like an ancient Basic, except for the syntax (I have no personal
experience with it, however).

In fact, it's probably safe to say that as far as software development
goes, picking C would teach you worse habits than something like
REALBasic, since C's support for modularity is so barebones.

S.

[Greg Comeau]

In article <11************ *********@o13g2 000cwo.googlegr oups.com>,
<ea***********@ earthlink.net> wrote:

...you experienced programmers of C; did you start with C? What course
of study did you pursue to get to where you are today?
I did lots of PL/I, FORTRAN, Pascal, a bunch of specialized languages
(LISP, SNOBOL, SPSS, etc), BASIC, assembler, etc. and tons of COBOL
at school and in a classic mainframe data processing environment before,
but also during, C. Some of it I did not care for, and some of it
I ran from, but all have been important to have been through.
That is to day, the diversity was the key to keeping me open-minded,
able to deal with the different language cultures, etc.
Would you
suggest starting with REALbasic first for a n00b? I am completely new
to programming and using a Mac and would like some input as to where to
begin a career in programming. I know this is probably a somewhat
undefined question, but would appreciate you input/advice. Thanks.

There is no requirement to start with BASIC. I have found that
although the language at hand has big impacts, especially the first
one, that also good instruction, good books, good resources, etc
are just as important, and more so. So while each language has
its limits and presents its own challenges, do note that learning
programming is not just about learning the details of one or
more languages (though again, they can be part of what shapes
our perspectives), but also and more importantly about organization,
problem solving, analytic breakdown, flow and structure and logic,
style, being open minded, thinking things through, understanding
problem domains, etc. Can you start with BASIC and do these
things? Sure. Since you're asking in a C NG, can you start
with C and do so too? Sure. http://www.comeaucomputing.com/booklist
is perhaps one stop to make to look at resources. Obviously there
is this NG. Do realize that programming is hard and everytime
you think it is simple you should try to rediscover yourself
and your skills.
--
Greg Comeau / Celebrating 20 years of Comeauity!
Comeau C/C++ ONLINE ==> http://www.comeaucomputing.com/tryitout
World Class Compilers: Breathtaking C++, Amazing C99, Fabulous C90.
Comeau C/C++ with Dinkumware's Libraries... Have you tried it?

[Zoso]

Thanks! I'll check out the FAQs, too! -gene

[Zoso]

I'm not familiar with what is available on a Mac. I suggest asking for

suggestions in a Mac programming newsgroup. Since you asked in
comp.lang.c, consider C

Thanks - I appreciate your assistance - noted!

[Greg Comeau]

In article <11************ **********@g47g 2000cwa.googleg roups.com>,
Zoso <ea***********@ earthlink.net> wrote:

Thanks! I'll check out the FAQs, too! -gene

There's this too: http://www.comeaucomputing.com/learn/faq
--
Greg Comeau / Celebrating 20 years of Comeauity!
Comeau C/C++ ONLINE ==> http://www.comeaucomputing.com/tryitout
World Class Compilers: Breathtaking C++, Amazing C99, Fabulous C90.
Comeau C/C++ with Dinkumware's Libraries... Have you tried it?

[Mark McIntyre]

On 29 Oct 2005 18:15:28 -0700, in comp.lang.c ,
ea***********@e arthlink.net wrote:

...you experienced programmers of C; did you start with C? What course
of study did you pursue to get to where you are today?
I learned basic, pascal and Fortran first, in that order. Though I
admit to stopping using Fortran as soon as I could...
Would you suggest starting with REALbasic first for a n00b?

No idea, never played with realbasic. Pascal is a good language to
start with though.

Or if you're on a Mac why not install gcc and play with that and a
good C learning book?

--
Mark McIntyre
CLC FAQ <http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/C-faq/top.html>
CLC readme: <http://www.ungerhu.com/jxh/clc.welcome.txt >

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[Randy Howard]

Thad Smith wrote
(in article
<43************ ***********@aut h.newsreader.oc tanews.com>):

What course
of study did you pursue to get to where you are today?
I think the OP will discover that the answer depends upon the
age of the respondent, and won't be of much use today. He
probably doesn't want to start out with PDP-11 assembler,
Fortran, Snobol, Basic, etc.
Would you
suggest starting with REALbasic first for a n00b? I am completely new
to programming and using a Mac and would like some input as to where to
begin a career in programming. I know this is probably a somewhat
undefined question, but would appreciate you input/advice. Thanks.
I'm not familiar with what is available on a Mac.

OS X is basically BSD UNIX with a nicer than usual window
manager on top of it. Any language available open source is
pretty much available. Apart from Microsoft proprietary
(despite marketing claims to the contrary) language is available
on it. Many come pre-installed or on the distribution DVD.
I suggest asking for
suggestions in a Mac programming newsgroup. Since you asked in
comp.lang.c, consider C!

True, although as others have said, C probably isn't a great
first language, unless you have a really good teacher. Back in
the day, you started out in assembler first, to understand the
basics of the system, but that doesn't seem to be much in form
any more, and most people /never/ learn the low-level details,
and admittedly don't need to learn them.

For a first language, you might consider something like Ruby,
which is useful for a lot of purposes, relatively clean
syntactically, object-oriented (in a more rational manner than
most) and has a very active development community right now.

--
Randy Howard (2reply remove FOOBAR)
"The power of accurate observation is called cynicism by those
who have not got it." - George Bernard Shaw

[vishnuvyas]

ea***********@e arthlink.net wrote:

...you experienced programmers of C; did you start with C? What course
of study did you pursue to get to where you are today? Would you
suggest starting with REALbasic first for a n00b? I am completely new
to programming and using a Mac and would like some input as to where to
begin a career in programming. I know this is probably a somewhat
undefined question, but would appreciate you input/advice. Thanks.

I started out with logo, moved onto gwbasic, pascal, and then C. But
even then, C is much trickier than it seems. Its a lot easier to 'shoot
yourself in the foot', and can get hard if really don't have a kick-ass
debugger.

So I would suggest something like scheme/python to get started with,
and if you are doing scheme get Dr.Scheme/PLTScheme, it has a decent
IDE, and comes with a bunch of mature libraries to get you doing some
nice stuff.

Though that might teach you what programming in C is like the way a
flight simulator teaches you what flying a f-14 is about. But when
doing C, you would have to worry about a lot more (things that you
shouldn't be worrying about without a very good reason, like say memory
management).

But thats still the tip of the iceberg, if you want a career in
programming you have to know a whole bunch of languages from purely
declarative ones like SQL to a bunch of domain specific languages that
no-one uses. Also you have to deal with monstrocities like standards
compliance, compiler issues, optimisiations, portability and friends..
So it ain't a bed of roses, but if you like the challenge, there ain't
anything that gives such a high as seeing your program working right
(and it lasts till you figure out that evantual bug, or worse, some one
else points it out).

So, with an ominous 'best of luck'.. welcome to programming.

Cheers
Vishnu

[Walter Roberson]

In article <11************ *********@g14g2 000cwa.googlegr oups.com>,
vishnuvyas <vi********@gma il.com> wrote:

But thats still the tip of the iceberg, if you want a career in
programming you have to know a whole bunch of languages from purely
declarative ones like SQL to a bunch of domain specific languages that
no-one uses. Also you have to deal with monstrocities like standards
compliance, compiler issues, optimisiations, portability and friends..

[OT]

I suspect you did not mean to write that friends are a form of
monstrosity ;-)
[It is an obscure grammatical point. When you use a comma list in English
then you do not put a comma between the second last item and the 'and'.
Hence as you used a comma list and there is no comma before the 'and',
the 'friends' becomes a seperate item on the list, instead of grouping
together with "portabilit y".]
--
If you lie to the compiler, it will get its revenge. -- Eric Sosman

[Skarmander]

Walter Roberson wrote:

In article <11************ *********@g14g2 000cwa.googlegr oups.com>,
vishnuvyas <vi********@gma il.com> wrote:

But thats still the tip of the iceberg, if you want a career in
programming you have to know a whole bunch of languages from purely
declarative ones like SQL to a bunch of domain specific languages that
no-one uses. Also you have to deal with monstrocities like standards
compliance, compiler issues, optimisiations, portability and friends..

[OT]

I suspect you did not mean to write that friends are a form of
monstrosity ;-)
[It is an obscure grammatical point. When you use a comma list in English
then you do not put a comma between the second last item and the 'and'.
Hence as you used a comma list and there is no comma before the 'and',
the 'friends' becomes a seperate item on the list, instead of grouping
together with "portabilit y".]

"With gratitude to my parents, Mother Teresa and the Pope."

Googling for "serial comma" gets you the details of the sordid debate
for and against, of which, as obscure points go, there is of course
plenty. :-)

S.