13 Oct
2010
13 Oct
'10
11:16 p.m.
On Wed, 13 Oct 2010, Josh Lawrence wrote:
Sparing you a lot of useless back story here, but for
fun a for
personal amusement (NOT for serious work), I'd like to start learning
a programming language. If I'm gonna learn one, I might as well learn
something that gets a lot of use in the open-source world. So which
one to choose? C or C++?
C is easy to learn and it's possible to master it very
quickly. Many languages (esp. C++) have been based on its
ideas and syntax. I recommend starting there. Good books
will have titles like "C for Dummies" or "Learn C in 21
days."
C++ is a large, somewhat complex language that takes a
couple years (at least) to master. If you get serious about
programming, I recommend you move on to C++. It makes it a
lot easier to structure and maintain large projects and
reuse code. However, /how/ to use C++ effectively to this
end is /not/ obvious. A good book to this end is "Thinking
in C++" by Bruce Eckels. Avoid books like "Learn C++ in 21
days." Those books are usually just teaching a bastardized
form of C.
-gabriel