[Semi Offtopic]Programming?

I have never been madly keen on new years resolutions as January is a time of year I pretty much want to sleep through. So I make my resolution to coincide with my birthday.

Which is today...

This year I've pretty much decided to try and learn to program in a real language and not just a scripting language (I have some skills in web stuff (PHP, MySQL, XHTML) and a little bit of knowledge of how LUA works (mainly from WoW addons but also from some other games that use LUA for scripting)).

So I want to know which language is a good starting point?
Specifically something that is similar in structure to PHP or LUA so I can build on what I already understand/know rather than learning something entirely new. Also I have no intention of trying to actually write games though writing for games is definitely something I like the idea of. Lastly I plan on working within the Windows platform as while I have a linux box I'm not a huge fan and don't use it much, so a windows based environment is essential. On the other hand I don't always need a GUI so a 'Visual' language isn't essential.

While no longer especially relevant I learned to program Turbo Pascal (Borland Turbo Pascal v5) a long time ago, which I used for my Computer Studies GCSE in about 1995 (TP was upto v7 IIRC at the time).

Oh and training (web and book based) is going to be needed so something that isn't only known to a handful of developers however good the language is.

Now I know that this forum is for City of Heroes and Villainous scum... so asking this question here is likely to get flamed, trolled, locked or just plain deleted. So I will add that of course I plan on writing things for City of Heroes (but not those evil red dudes ).

Reason I'm posting it here is while this is not a programming community there are some people here who are programmers and I'm less likely to get flamed down or to Google it (which I have done BTW) and just told an answer.

Any help much appreciated (and birthday wishes too. ).

If you're intent on using Windows, the best compiled language you can probably learn is C#.NET. It's in wide use, and it's actually a really good language for a MS product. It's a proper OO language with all the trimmings - generics, delegates, lambdas, garbage collection, etc; and without the headaches of something like C/C++. As of 4.0, there's even a limited form of dynamic typing.

The downsides are, having an IDE is pretty much a requirement, and all the open source IDEs for .NET pretty much suck (you can check out SharpDevelop if you want). Your best bet is to pick up VS.NET express, which is free, but it has a subset of the features, and you wont be able to install Resharper, which I find so helpful as to be nearly essential nowadays.

So if you're serious and you don't mind spending some cash, I would buy VS.NET 2010 and Resharper. But if you're just doing it as a hobby, VS.NET Express by itself will do fine.

For web development, I would start off with ASP.NET MVC, which will teach you some important design patterns. I wouldn't bother with Web Forms anymore, which just encourages bad habits. WPF is the fat-client app framework of choice, though as a web developer I haven't used it much and can't give much guidance there. If you're creating something with a database, I would highly recommend using an ORM like NHibernate, which should be generally less painful and less error prone than using ADO.NET, at least in simple cases.

I'm not sure where to point you for a basic OO primer - probably just Googling something will do, but after you pick up the basic concepts of inheritance, polymorphism, and encapsulation, and have played around with OO in C# a bit - I would start yourself off on the right foot and pick up the book Head First Design Patterns, which is a more accessible version of the seminal work by The Gang of Four. I would read up on Uncle Bob's SOLID principles, Unit Testing, and Test-Driven Development.

Obviously how much of these things you pay attention to is going to depend on how serious you are. If you want to just hack out some code every once in a while on the weekend, then many of these things probably don't apply. But if you want to actually learn the proper practices of software craftsmanship, then I believe those concepts put you on the right path, and you'll probably discover more as you go along.

Having said all that, I would at least consider using Linux for this, and going with Ruby on Rails. Ruby is a better OO language than almost anything else around, and the Rails community typically have the best practices and standards regarding high quality design and coding. Ruby on Windows, is, however, a huge pain - so I wouldn't recommend it unless you go with Linux or Mac.

BTW, happy birthday!

Another vote for C# .NET. Not only is it free to get started (you can see the link provided by james_joyce below), if you're familiar with Windows applications at all the logic behind a lot it will be immediately familiar, at least in terms of creating basic application functions like button clicks and drop-down menus.

The reason I say C# and not Visual Basic is that C# bears a closer resemblance to C++, should you ever desire to start working with that. It's also my feeling that people who pick up C# tend to do better at switching to Visual Basic when the project requires it than vice versa, simply because Visual Basic is the easier to "read" language, IMO. Also, you may be thinking "I'll never be good enough to do C++" but with baby steps you might surprise yourself. Since C++ is the language most big budget games are written in it's a great language to know if you ever decide to do mod video games, for example, as you can do with stuff like Civilization IV (a game that actually ships with its source C++ code for you to toy with; IMO an ASTOUNDING resource for the aspiring game programmer).

Note that knowing C# or VB will also allow you to develop develop for Silverlight, Microsoft's Flash competitor (used on sites like Netflix to broadcast your movies). That is also free to get started with, but requires you to download Microsoft Visual Web Developer, a separate tool. Personally, I am a former Flash developer who now prefers to work almost exclusively in Silverlight due to cost savings.

(Note, however, that my clients sometimes want things developed in Flash anyway. That language is ActionScript 3, which I actually find to be "learner friendly." It is, IMO, much easier to learn the basic steps of writing a game in Flash/ActionScript than almost any other tool/language. However, I also find that as projects get more complex ActionScript can become frustrating, due to limitations that language has. In particular, ActionScript's insistence on making Arrays generic objects can lead to HUGE programming headaches that C# sails by; on the other hand, I have lost countless hours yelling at C# on my computer monitor because I can't figure out what load path it's using to grab external pictures/sounds/XML files etc.)

The deployment limitations of .NET can be frustrating, as james_joyce noted in his post.

I have no experience with Ruby on Rails but after reading Jame's praise for it may need to check it out.

Much to think on there, thank you both.

How serious I am will depend on how quickly I pick it up, in an ideal world it'll get me a job... obviously the world is far from ideal so it'll most likely be something I use to make things more fun.

I'll certainly give Ruby a look at though not sure if it'll go further than that, while C# (keep calling it C(hash) not sharp) was something I had already looked at but wasn't sure if it was any good for someone starting from scratch or not. As for C/C++ I've looked at them (well IIRC C++) in the past but never got further than that... and it was the distant past, (Borland C++ 4.5 IIRC came on about 8 floppies).

Edit: Just booted my linux box and tried to add any form of Ruby (which I'm after rather than the web development for RoR) and found that a)My Kubuntu install is very out of date and b)Couldn't get either package manager to install anything to do with Ruby. And I'm not going to start compiling stuff myself at this stage. However I will grab a new Kubuntu disc at some point soon and do a clean install (I'll stick the laptop onto Win7 while I'm at it, and then try again. Until then I'll give C# a go.

Since you want to primarily work on the Windows platform, like others said, C# would be good to learn. It's a full blown OO language so if you ever decide to learn Java or C++ down the road, they'll be easier to pickup.

Visual Studio is a great IDE, I'd say it's Microsoft's best product, although it can be pretty expensive. The free version should serve you fine for starting out.

If you're just going to learn to program "academically", you can go with any of the above. If you learn better having a specific objective in mind, i.e., making something useful, you can always try VBA, particularly inside of Excel, to make good stuff.

The most important thing to do is have one or more small projects to work on that's within your abilities and interest. Given that and your existing experience, almost any reasonable language will be easy to pick up. If you have PHP experience, you may know of some small tasks like parsing web log files or something that will work as a good training exercise.

That being said, I'm a Python fan--it's a very nice language, readable and elegantly designed for the most part. Lots of online resources, including some good tutorials. I've taught a handful of people the language myself, and I've always been surprised at how quickly they do clever things that are correct and reasonable for the task.

For future-proofing your knowledge, stay away from anything that's single platform (eg, C#) and stick with cross-platform technologies (Java, Python, etc.).

Depends a lot on what you're trying to do. The top languages I use are Ruby (I enjoy working in it, and I like Rails for web stuff), C (all-purpose chainsaw, and I do some low-level stuff where it is the sole viable option), Unix shell (it's available "everywhere" for my purposes, and makes up for flaws by being so very easy to reuse)...

MS has spent the last thirty years systematically getting other companies to invest heavily in a particular technology or API, then deprecating that API and building a new one. This allows them to maintain a substantial competitive advantage, as long as they can determine what the new API would be. Because of this, I'd tend to shy away from relying on their APIs. Of course, that assumes you have your choice of what you want to work on... You may not.

I tend to think that it's a pretty good experience for people to have done at least one language around the level of C, but I'm not sure it's actually all that useful anymore.

I will say: Don't dismiss scripting languages as "just" scripting languages. They're every bit as much real programming languages as the compiled languages, and they are often much, MUCH more expressive. There's a reason that, despite being a reasonably good C programmer, I still do a ton of stuff in Ruby, or perl, or sh... It's because there are things they do better.

I would never, ever, rely on Mono -- at some point, the author is going to realize that Bill Gates is never gonna sleep with him and give up. More significantly, MS has no reason to preserve compatibility with it, and a lot of reasons to actively break it if it ever looks like a threat to their domination of the API.