<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
</head>
<body>
<p>Hi,<br>
</p>
<p>I agree that C might not be the ideal 'first' serious programming
language, but after 40 years of programming, I’m still not
entirely sure which one would be.</p>
<p>I started with assembler on the 6502 CPU, then moved on to the
68000. From there, I learned K&R C (Kernighan and Ritchie). My
background in assembler, especially with memory addressing, helped
me make sense of C’s pointers. Later, I transitioned to ANSI C.</p>
<p>After that came C++. Once I got my head around object-oriented
programming (OOP), I really fell in love with it.</p>
<p>Eventually, I got into PHP and JavaScript, both of which are
syntactically similar to C in many ways.</p>
<p>But the language that really expanded my thinking was Erlang. It
was so different from anything else I’d ever used. That said, I
wouldn’t recommend Erlang unless you had a specific use case for
it.</p>
<p>I’ve worked with people who recommend Java as a good first
language—it’s quite similar to C but without the headaches of
manual memory management. However, I haven’t had any first-hand
experience with it myself.</p>
<p>Hope this helps.</p>
<p>Huw</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 23/10/2024 10:16, Neil Greenwood via
Swlug wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CAE0XVWQYXXZtiUeWYDGQgNQszHqrvGKwiiXaFr7uEQTfzJegaA@mail.gmail.com">
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<div dir="auto">
<div>
<div class="gmail_quote">
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Wed, 23 Oct 2024, 10:04
Morgan Green via Swlug, <<a
href="mailto:swlug@mailman.lug.org.uk"
moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">swlug@mailman.lug.org.uk</a>>
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0
.8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div>
<div dir="auto">Hi,</div>
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
<div dir="auto">I am very new to programming, but I want
to start out on C to grasp the fund<span>amentals of
all programming lan<span>guages. Can anyone
recommend me any paperbooks on C programming that
is suitable for complete beginners?</span></span></div>
<div dir="auto"><span><span><br>
</span></span></div>
<div dir="auto"><span><span>Ki<span>nd regards,</span></span></span></div>
<div dir="auto"><span><span><span>Morgan Green</span></span></span></div>
</div>
</blockquote>
</div>
</div>
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
<div dir="auto">Hi Morgan, </div>
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
<div dir="auto">I'm not sure C is the best language for a
beginner. You have a lot of extra work to do managing memory -
my first C program (after I had 8 years experience with 2-3
other languages) just segfaulted, and I never fixed it! </div>
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
<div dir="auto">If you are just starting out, my recommendation
is to look at Python - apart from the strict indentation
requirement, it's much more friendly. This will give you a
good understanding of the fundamentals that are present in
most languages.</div>
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
<div dir="auto">If you want dead-tree books, Pragmatic Press
make a good series of introductory titles for both C and
Python, as well as a wife range of other languages. </div>
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
<div dir="auto">Hope this helps, </div>
<div dir="auto">Neil</div>
<div dir="auto">
<div class="gmail_quote">
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0
.8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div>
<div
id="m_-1858114475879792213ms-outlook-mobile-signature"
dir="auto">
<div><br>
</div>
Sent from <a href="https://aka.ms/AAb9ysg"
target="_blank" rel="noreferrer"
moz-do-not-send="true">Outlook for Android</a></div>
</div>
-- <br>
Swlug mailing list<br>
<a href="mailto:Swlug@mailman.lug.org.uk" target="_blank"
rel="noreferrer" moz-do-not-send="true"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext">Swlug@mailman.lug.org.uk</a><br>
<a
href="https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/swlug"
rel="noreferrer noreferrer" target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/swlug</a><br>
</blockquote>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<br>
<fieldset class="moz-mime-attachment-header"></fieldset>
</blockquote>
</body>
</html>