Starting down the path.

2010-05-02T19:03:00.001-07:00

I have been over the last few days looking at all the options available to me. The most important thing to me right now is usefulness. I want to learn a language that I can use often.

Being in a Linux environment I looked at the most common languages used for programs and by far it was C. Python was also used frequently but not anywhere near as much. So it will be C that is my first path.

My son has decided to come along and learn with me though he wants to learn C++. It will be fun to see what lay ahead of us on this journey. Our first steps will be searching for good reference material and development software.

We have found a few good sites for tutorials and have chosen this one as our first.

For me:
Lesson 1: The basics of C

And for him:
C++ Language Tutorial

My first lesson concentrated on learning this simple program:

// Hello world program

#include

int main ()
{
printf (“Hello, world!\n”);
return 0;
}

My son's looked like this:

// My first program

#include

int main ()
{
std::cout << “Hello, world! I am alive!“;
return 0;
}

As you can see there are differences between C and C++ the first being how the includes are handled and the inclusion of the namespace std in a limited way. He could have declared using namespace std; in the header but then it would bring in the standard library globally which in some cases can cause trouble so we are avoiding that by using the std::cout.

I know it's not all that impressive yet but we have both learned a lot the last couple days.

First steps

2010-04-29T21:26:00.000-07:00

This will be my first post on what will be a long journey I am sure. My intentions are to learn computer programing through exploration and discovery. I hope you join me on my quest.

A little background. I am retired (medically) and unable to work. I am bi-polar with a number of medical problems including chronic asthma/bronchitis and fibromyalgia. I at one time was a computer consultant and knew how to program in ASM, Forth, FORTRAN and Pascal. However after a bi-polar episode they put me on a medication that induced seizures. It was not caught quickly and I almost died. As a result I lost a large part of my memory including programing and most of the higher math I had studied in college among other things. It has taken quite some time to get back some functionality and only recently have I been able to keep things together enough to relearn some of what I lost. One of the problems I encounter with bi-polar disorder is keeping my mind from the self destruct option. To do that I have learned to keep it as busy as I can. Not allowing it to wander to far. So it is for that reason I am embarking on this journey. In hopes of keeping the beast in line and rescuing my past.

My first decision is what language to take up. I thought of returning to ASM (assembly language) but I thought it best to take up a high level language in hopes that I will be able to make the connections I need to learn the language more readily due to the increase in readability that the higher languages provide.

I am on Ubuntu Linux so I will take options that work best natively
So here are the options:

C, C++, C#
Python
Ruby
Java
Perl
FORTRAN
COBOL
Lisp
ADA

I am sure there are others but for now that's a decent list.

Here I am at the beginning of my journey and faced with a huge task. Deciding which road to go down. Each has its beautiful places but I am sure there are dangers on each road as well. How does one narrow the choices. Is it a matter of strengths vs weaknesses? Personal preferences? Power? Readability? All have enticing venues to search out. As I have said before FORTRAN would be a step down a road once traveled. But why not try something different new and exciting. For sheer speed C looks good. But for fun and ease Ruby has it's place. Python is small and powerful but Perl has many more options. What a choice. Well I will leave that for another day. For now I will read and explore each option before heading out on a path.

Thanks for reading see ya next time.
James.

Explorations in Programing

Starting down the path.

First steps