What programming languages should someone learn before C++?

Question

Are there any programming languages that would be beneficial to learn before learning C++?

Answer 1

I would learn Visual Basic, as it is the language also used for scripting and macro writing in MS office then learn C++. As just about any language can be used to teach fundamentals such as looping and conditional branching VB does have a distinct advantage over C++ in the way it handles strings. Remember BASIC is Beginners All Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code and as a beginner language it simplifies many aspects of programming.

BASIC (VB) allows easy manipulation of strings. You can think of strings as a series of characters and numbers like a sentence. A string (i.e. sentence) in BASIC can be represented by a variable like X. In C the same string must be represented by an array of characters and indexed with a pointer...... I know you don't understand that but that is the point.... C is a more powerfule language to learn and can do many things VB can't but the learning curve will be a little steeper. I recommend learning VB so as to make it easier to learn concepts related to string maniulation and related concepts like concatenation. In VB you can concentrate on learning these fundamental concepts without getting bogged down with C's string arrays and pointers.

Answer 2

It is not "mandatory", but it is advised. C++ is itself C but with added features and capabilities. Most things are the same. But it would be much better if you learn C before going into C++, just to get used to the way of writing the program and getting used to the language. C++ has what everybody calls "objects" or its "object o-r-i-e-n-t-e-d"... This is something that is totally different from C and many other programming languages implement this "thing". So before you jump into this whole object and C++ thing, go for C

Answer 3

Universities tend to teach C++ or Java as their introductory courses. Both of these will give you a good foundation to build on for all the other languages out there. Personally I learned C++ first, but I find Java to be much easier to use, and probably much easier to learn. Sun offers a lot of good tutorials to help you get started with Java, and they have great documentation for explaining all their built in classes.

Answer 4

Pascal. A lot of universities teach it as a first programming language. You'll learn good structured programming techniques without being distracted by all of the little idiosyncracies of C or C++.

Answer 5

Learn Perl it is a great language. The knock on it is that while it is powerful, versatile, easy and fast to code in, its flexibility makes it too easy to write sloppy code and it is often a major pain to read and figure out somebody else's perl code. After C++ (or C#) you might also want to consider Java.

Answer 6

hmm learn programming is like a bridge
you understand the concept and you are over the bridge

language are set into two category
high level - language are almost like written documents where it can easily read and code

low level- to a novice it looks like random words

both has pro and con
i say learn a high level language first

java is a high level language