Ask HN: Is language or paradigm important while learning to program? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is language or paradigm important while learning to program?

5 pointsoptbuild5 comments

Some say that language doesn't matter while learning to program for the first time. It is the principles that matter.

Others say functional paradigm should be taught first before imperative to make code less error prone.

Some others suggest that we should focus on data and its structure more and learn coding based on the data we are operating on. So pick a project to solve.

And then there are language suggestors like do Python, or Javascript, or Scheme, etc, etc.

But do these really have any importance or is any place good to start?

Does it depend upon a person's age?

I know there are many people on HN who started in the era of green and black terminals with assembly or very low level languages. But if someone decides to start today, what would be the best choice?

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Start with something you can handle. Which language doesn't really matter but keep in mind that are so many possibilities. When you are comfortable with your first language, try some other, preferably with a different paradigm. It's totally fine using one language for development most of the time, just remember there are so many ways to accomplish one task.

The age does not matter as long as you can sit down and code. You don't see many old people doing programming because it's simply not many there. Computing is relatively new. It's obvious most people entering this field would be young, older people might require a change of career hence less incentive.

My Pa just retired. 30+ years of coding. Most older people aren't coding because they get promoted out of it. Some stay with it, because they love the puzzles.

Here's what I say.. If you can fix a car you can debug code. You take all the info you can get and you make guesses, then you narrow it down. Writing new code is about the same. Find something you want to do, and poke until you get it. As time goes on you get faster.

Important bit of coding as a job though. You are always falling behind. Tech moves so fast, there's always something to learn. It's a blessing and curse. Sometimes it feels like too much, and other times it's just the best thing ever.

It's an empty question. There is nothing in the question to answer. The idea that one or the other is more important is irrational. There simply is nothing like a rational scale or a single quality to rank one against the other. I haven't begun to address the issues of for whom, which language, which paradigm...

It's all important, and it's all essential. Begin with something simple in both respects, and then grow the understand of each in parallel as one advances.

We can also think about it from another perspective. Stay close to the hardware. This helped me as a CS student understand how computers work. So C and assembly taught parallel to microcontroller and architectures was helpful.

But that is only valid for CS students going for a good understanding about computing towards earning a degree perhaps.

Best choice today. Javascript.. 100%

It is the easiest language to access by a long shot. You can inspect this page and see some of it.

It offers a very responsive experience, in that you get to see the changes you make almost as you make them.

There are millions of tutorials online, and most are free.

A very cheep chrome-book or ancient laptop is good enough to work with, and you have everything you'll "need" installed already.

Is is a great language? No.

Will it teach you to code? yes.

On a side. I'm teaching my 13year old how to code with JS.

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