Updated May 31, 2023
Introduction to Programming for Beginners
Programming for beginners is actually very brainy and useful stuff. Learning how to code not only makes you creative but also expands a range of new choices for your career. Even if you already have a good job, and are not looking for it any further, still programming for beginners is always useful in every other way.
Whether you are a programmer, hacker, artist or just a normal Hardware engineer, programming for beginners will open up a wide range of ideas and will make you smarter and make your life easier if you learn how to automate it into your daily lifestyle.
But, the thing here is, programming for beginners looks complicated. For a person who has never written a code in his life, learning to code can be a bit of a puzzle as to where to start. Don’t worry, that’s what I am here for; to make your life easier with programming for beginners. So, let’s get started, shall we?
Types of Popular Languages in the Programming
If you are from some random background other than coding, they may have heard it from your friends or from some other place about programming languages such as C, C++ or Java, and many more. But it is highly unlikely that you may have heard about Python, Ruby, Haskell or Perl. Welcome to the Programming World.
If you are a true programmer, you may have surely heard of that; but if you have just heard about coding and want to get started, then very few people know about them. So, let me give you a list of languages, which are the popular languages in the programming software world:
- C
- C++
- C#
- Java
- JavaScript
- Python
- Ruby
- Perl
- Scala
- PHP
Besides the above, you can always start to learn by learning HTML, CSS or XML. But these are not programming languages; however, to make you understand programming languages better, these markup languages are good to get you a hang of that.
C, C++, C#, and Java are low-level computer languages. When I say low-level, I mean they are the programming languages that are the nearest to machine code. Obviously not as near as Assembly languages (which I would never recommend as a starter language). I will be explaining the difference between high-level and low-level computing languages in one of my next blogs. JavaScript, Perl, Ruby, and Python are high-level languages.
They are extremely easy to learn when compared to low-level languages. PHP is also a scripting language similar to Perl, Ruby or Python, but it is a server-side scripting language, which is mostly used for web development. Make sure you don’t confuse yourself with Java and JavaScript as the same. They are totally opposite.
Then you may be asking, “Why the similar name?” Maybe you should keep that question on hold until you read my next blog. JavaScript is a high-level, dynamic, untyped, and interpreted programming language. The only one left out now is Scala. Scala uses JVM to compile and is a functional language. If you have any experience in Java, I suggest you start with this. Else, say no to scale until you learn Java.
Oh, So Many Languages!
There are so many programming languages to learn. Which can be the best to get started? But there is no such thing as specific.
Every other programmer has their own style and approach, and there is no such thing as the “best programming language”. But if you still want my suggestion, then I would suggest going in either of the two ways:
1. The Hard Way
If you want to learn to program for beginners the hard way, I suggest you start learning C, then C++, and MySQL. MySQL is a database-oriented programming language. C and C++ are easy to get started but hard to keep ongoing. If you start with C, you could probably learn enough to write simple programs, but picking up the fine points about arrays, pointers, and other nontrivial features would be difficult.
C++ is actually much easier than the basic C. Much has been changed in C++ to date. Learning C on your own can be a hassle, but once you have grasped the idea of C, then learning every other language will be a piece of cake, trust me.
However, try not to learn the whole language at once. Make small test programs like “hello world” to get the basics down, and then explore the more complex ideas like structures, pointers, and dynamic memory. C is purely an object-oriented programming language, so there is hardly any part where you can go wrong.
C is a decent language, but it depends heavily on pointers, which are essentially references to memory addresses. Pointers are complicated, and it is really easy to get things wrong in programming for beginners and cause it hard to track down crashes and bugs. These sorts of bugs are the source of most of the security vulnerabilities in learning programming software and operating systems.
If you are still stuck on learning C, then make sure you get good programming for beginners environment with a visual debugger (generally known as an IDE for Integrated Development Environment). The best one I’ve ever used is Visual C++ (which also works for C) for Windows machines. XCode on the Mac is decent as well.
A visual debugger will allow you to step through your programs line-by-line so you can see what the program is doing and catch any mistakes in logic more easily. It will allow you to verify your assumptions about what the programming for beginners is doing.
2. The Easy Way
If you are still reading this blog, then it means you may have googled about this a bit and probably came back ‘cause you felt C was quite a mind-stress. Welcome back then! So, to get you started, the best and the simplest programming language I would ask you to learn would be Python.
If you ask me, I myself started learning with C. But the thing is though I read a lot of articles, I didn’t have anyone to guide me properly through this. I am a penetration security expert as of now. So, when I started learning to program for beginners a few years back, I had no clue about python.
If and only if someone had told me about python at that point in time, I would have so much amount of time I invested in C. But the thing is, as for me, I think what actually happened was good. Since I, anyhow would have had to learn C later on. But that is not the case with everyone. Is it?
Python would be a piece of cake in front of C. The reason being Python is a high-level language and extremely easy to read and code. Following is an example of a Hello world written in python:
>>>print("Hello world")And following is the example of C, C++, and Java:
Hello World in C:
#include <stdio.h>
int main()
{
printf("Hello world\n");
return 0;
}Hello World in C++:
#include <iostream>
int main()
{
std::cout << "Hello World!" << std::endl;
return 0;
}Hello, World in Java:
public class HelloWorld {
public static void main(String[] args) {
System.out.println("Hello, World");
}
}Now, I don’t think I need to simplify it any further how easy it is in Python. And just in case you are extreme programming for beginners, what I have written here is to print a simple “Hello World” prompt on the screen.
The same thing goes with Ruby. In fact learning, Ruby programming is even simpler than Python. Here goes the Ruby Code for Hello World:
puts "Hello World!";Besides these, Python is extremely fun to learn. It’s even extremely easy to compile it as well. You can simply download the py2exe and start converting your xyz.py file to abc.exe. If you think that this is extremely easy, I can guarantee that it’s even a heck lot easier to get going once you have started programming in python.
Where is Java?
Besides all of the above, Java is one of the most practical languages to learn. Java is the second most popular programming language, and it’s the language taught in Stanford’s renowned (and free) Intro to CS programming course. Java enforces solid Object Oriented Principles (OOP) that are used in modern languages, including C++, Perl, Python, and PHP. Once you’ve learned Java, you can learn other OOP languages pretty easily.
Java has the advantage of a long history of usage. There are lots of “boilerplate” examples; it’s been taught for decades, and it’s widely used for many purposes (including Android app development), so it’s a very practical language to learn. You won’t get machine-level control, as you would with C, but you’ll be able to access/manipulate the most important computer parts like the filesystem, graphics, and sound for any fairly sophisticated and modern program—that can run on any operating system.
If you are specifically trying to learn coding to build a career, the following are the examples as to which language should you start learning for which roles:
Server-side Development – Python, Ruby, PHP, Java or Dot Net
Client-side Programming – HTML, CSS, JavaScript
Mobile Programming – Objective-C or Java (for Android) and HTML/CSS/XML
3D/Animation – C/C++, OpenGL
High-Performance Computing – C/C++, Java
Web Security – Python/ Ruby/ Assembly Languages
If you are into programming for beginners just because you want to develop apps or stuff, then you should probably start with what you think is easy, rather than going for what others say, the reason being everyone will try to apply their preference on you. But only you can know what is best for you.
‘Nuf said, I think it’s about time you get started with learning, rather than just reading articles, because “Thinking about time wasted; is more wasted time” 😀
First Image Source: pixabay.com
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