/prog/ - Programming

Depends what you're planning on doing.

C# is fine if you're in Windows.

>>3578

Would you mind recommend me some books?

It's terrible unless you want to work with Microsoft, which I advise against. Start with C, it's what freshman Harvard students start with as well.

This book is the de facto C book that you will want to use the most. This will be your reference style book. You should learn and use the coding and formatting style known as "K&R style." It is not the book you will start with however.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0131103628/

Start with this book. Read. Complete all of the exercises chapter by chapter. Then move on to the next book.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1565923065/

The next book. Neither good for beginners nor advanced users. This is the true intermediate book for preparing you for the advanced books.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0673999866/

Now moving onto the advanced book.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0131774298/

but check your local library or discount book store first for a cheaper price. I was able to get them half and fourth off at a local bookstore. You don't have to purchase them all at once.

Go through only one book at a time. Make sure to spend at least a couple hours each day, reading and completing exercises.

Congratulations, these books have made you into an expert programmer. And you know an actual useful language.

Additional resource:

http://c-faq.com/

C# is fine unless you're on Windows. They're porting it to OSX and Linux, but it's not quite there yet. Eventually you'll want to learn another language, but don't worry about that. C# is fine to start off with, and you can always learn another language (it gets exponentially easier to learn new languages).

>>3579

I don't have any books, but these tutorials are pretty good.

http://rbwhitaker.wikidot.com/c-sharp-tutorials

Though the version of VS is a little old, so the beginning might be a bit different. This guy has published a book on C#, so you might want to consider that if you like the tutorials.

>>3578 >>3584 >>3581

>>3576 All three of the above responses are incorrect. C# is now a good crossplatform language with good support on mainstream operating systems (Mono http://www.mono-project.com/, open source compiler https://github.com/dotnet/roslyn).

With programming it's important to understand things conceptually, C is not object orientated so it can be a bad idea to get started with that language unless you have a specific reason to because most popular languages are.

C# is a great language, but not a good choice to start because there aren't many resources for a complete beginner, like there are for Java, C++ or python.

>>3576

It really depends on what you want to do. Want to easily write cross-platform programs, with easy-to-use build-in GUI and graphics functionality? Java.

Want to really start at the beginning? Bit of assembly just so you know what it is. Then do a lot of C, and some LISP (I recommend scheme using SICP) for an alternative model.

C# is basically Java - Microsoft edition.

Python for scripting

Javascript is basically client-side python for the web.

PHP for webdev backend

and so forth.

You really need to tell us what you want to do before anyone can make a good guess as to what you should learn.

Everything you see posted here is just general recommendation for your average programmer.

You should start with something easy, that you will understand and that will keep you actually coding. I recommend PHP, since you can write useful stuff in it pretty fast (forum spammers for example, or web scrapers).

People will recommend to you what they've been using themselves lately, but they don't realize that you're a beginner and they have years of experience. PHP will teach you the basics without having you worry about things that other languages will, so I think starting with that is a good option.

>>3600

I forgot to add that it has great documentation, one that actually explains everything, with plenty of examples.

Don't learn PHP, it's a shit language that's down the gutter in terms of security, performance and design in general.

C# is a great language to start with, it performs well, has plenty of application in the client and server space and is easy to learn.

>>3600

>PHP

Here's a good tutorial to start:

http://eev.ee/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-design/

While we are at it, we should post what languages we learned and in what order.

QB -> VB6 -> VB.NET -> C# -> C++ (Win32 API, FMOD API, SDL2) -> Java

I use C++ the most, but I do not recommend you using it if you are completely new to programming. Personally I recommend starting out with something easier so you can gain coincidence and better learn the basics that apply to all programming languages, but that is just me. Find what works for you.

>>3576

It really depends what you want to do. If you find that you just want to make silly shit like Windows with Buttons that do stuff, either start with something like Visual Basic .NET or C#. I personally started with Visual Basic 6, and found control arrays a great way to learn how to use Arrays. I occasionally fire up VB6 to do quick tests with code that I later port.

If text based input programs don't bother you, you can learn C or Python. If you are on Windows, you can even feel free to dick with the conio.h header in C to do some silly things like make a little ANSI character walk around the screen. Just know that you can't use conio.h anywhere else except Windows. People bash this header for being not standard, but I say screw them, you're learning so it doesn't matter

If you find Python too hard, you can always dick around with QBasic and do simple things there, like make a really shitty 1 person pong clone or something.

Javascript is a shit language to learn as a newbie, you will get way too many bad habits from coding with it.

>>3584

>C# is fine unless you're on Windows.

Unless you're not on windows*

Learn Python

I started like this:

ms basic on tandy trs-80 > qbasic on dos > C++ on windows 95 > C/C++ on Linux/Unix > HTML, Javascript, CSS > PHP on Linux/Unix >More Javascript (actually understanding the language) > Java > C# > Ruby

Now I only use PHP for work. There's nothing wrong with PHP. Hating PHP is a meme but there are definitely better languages to learn.

I feel like Python is the beginner / Basic language of today.

C should be learned by anyone who is SERIOUS about understanding computers and programming though. Best to either learn it first or save it for later after you have good basics in Python