What programing language should i learn in the beginning and what is the difference between languages ?

Question

What programing language should i learn in the beginning and what is the difference between languages such as C++,C#,VB,Java,.....and what is .Net ?

Answer 1

I would suggest that you learn C/C++
C will introduce you to structured programming and C++ will introduce you to Object oriented programming.

Once you know either of these, it should be quite simple to pick up the others. Most of the currently popular languages (like Java, C#) are more object oriented than C++, and simpler too. However a language like C is very simple and yet provides a lot of options for experimenting and learning.

.NET is a framework that lets programs written using different languages (that support this framework) to run on it. Basically it lets people use a language of their choice (C#, VB etc) to code different parts of the same application and all the code can still hang in together and work in conjunction.
The .NET framework is analogous to the Virtual Machine for Java. Both of them let Intermediate language programs to run on them. I know that all these terms might sound confusing, but don't worry, it is not rocket science.

Answer 2

.Net is a virtual platform like Java.

The differences are what kind of program they are compiled and end up becoming. At least that is true today. The languages of all you mentioned are general programming languages but C# or Java are ideal to learning beginner purpose. C++ is still good but it came from an ancient and dissimilar times so it is not a good choice for beginner. VB is OK but tied to a RAD-style programming system.

Answer 3

First learn BASIC, Visual Basic. C, C++ were built differently and have some different commands, and serve most different purposes. VB means a Visual Language usually referred to Visual Basic, Visual C++ or Visual C#. Java is mostly the language used for internet programming next to html but makes more useful programs than html which is for websites.

Answer 4

You definitely have a lot of choices for the languages you might want to use. Some languages are procedure based, some are object based. Procedural languages are just that. You can have variables and you can have procedures, some of which are called functions. Older languages tend to use English language words for built-in procedures and variables. As such, if you speak English, it is easier to learn them. Newer languages tend to use naming conventions which may not have much to do with the language you speak. Object-oriented languages are languages where both variables and procedures are grouped into things called objects or sometimes classes. There are good reasons for using them. The languages you cited are all Object-oriented. (Biased response follows) C#, VB and .Net are all proprietary tools geared towards the Windows Operating system. What that means is they might help you understand Windows but they encourage practices which are so OS specific you may not understand why you are doing them, and if Microsoft changes some of its procedures (which it is constantly under pressure to do) you might suddenly find yourself at a loss as to how to get your program to work. These languages (and in .Net's case development tools) should be avoided until you have some grasp of what you are doing. (end Biased response). That Java originated with Sun Microsystems, is a different issue. It has widespread support on many OSes. It would not necessarily be my recommendation for a first programming language, but for reasons other than who supports it.

For many of us, Microsoft Basic (usually, there were other Basics out there) was the first programming language. This was an interpreted language, which meant that your program was translated into machine code every time it was run, by design it used mainly English Language constructs, so it was easily understandable, and it gave most of us our first taste of what our computers could do. The problem is that Basic, while simple and powerful, is not widely supported except in such specialized and complex implementations as Visual Basic and VBscript in your web browser (also not a recommended way to try to learn. VBscript and its alternative Javascript, while useful once you know programming are things you can afford to wait on).

Pascal was a language invented to teach programming. It uses a lot of English language constructs (Procedures which return values are called functions, procedures which don't, procedures), and it forces good programming practices such as declaring variables before you implement procedures and functions which will use them. Support for it may exist in schools in your area. Otherwise you might look elsewhere. C implements many of the same things. It was written for computers far less powerful than today's so many of the procedures are implemented as single characters ('?', '%' and of course '+' and '*' all have meanings in your programs) and everything is called a function. Procedures which don't return a value are called void functions. It's highly compressed, but still widely supported. C++ began as a superset of C, and introduced objects to the mix. It also allows you to declare variables when you first use them, which really isn't that good an idea for beginners. It is also widely supported. The downside for all of these is that they are compiled languages, which means in your development environment you have to do more than just type "run" to get them to work, usually. Perl is an interpreted language which is worth looking into. Hope these suggestions help.

Answer 5

C Language

Answer 6

logicaly, VB.NET is much easier and better to start with as your first steps into programing; WHY? for many reasons one of them it uses easier commands to understand and NOT CASE SENSITIVE!

but in the other hand, C/C++ or C#, is a strong gateway to understand many other programing languages which might share the same way, but it will be harder to learn.

Answer 7

idk