portelli wrote in message <37224A1B.9E54CA8A@pilot.msu.edu>...
>Start with c.  There are several free compilers out there.  For the PC
>there is djgpp, cygwin, and several others.


I wouldn't recommend that actually. C is a difficult language to learn as a
first language. If you really don't want to do anything object-oriented,
then I would recommend Pascal instead.

But then again, why *not* an object-oriented langauge?

It is only a myth that object-oriented languages are more difficult to learn
than procedural ones (like C or Pascal). This mostly stems from the fact,
that most programmers began with BASIC, C or Pascal but very few with an
object-oriented language, and that for those oldtimers "object-orientation"
still is some strange "newfangled" concept because it goes partly contrary
to what they have learned before. For a newbie who never had contact with
programming before, the whole object-orientation can be very intuitive and
easy to grasp, because there are no preconceptions about "how something
should be done" (in terms of programming) that are to be overcome.

In the recent "C/C++ Users Journal" from May 99 Bjarne Stroustrup makes a
very convincing argument about giving C++ the first choice over C as the
first language of a beginner (well, he is the inventor of C++, so who would
have guessed his opinion in that matter? ;-) .

C++ also has the advantage, that it is a superset of C. That means, once you
have mastered C++, you also have mastered C! (But you don't have to use all
the ugly nitty-gritty things from C, because often C++ offers a more elegant
solution.)

I can also very much recommend Java as a very tidy and strongly structured
(and easy to learn) language. Most probably easier to learn than C++!
It may be a little more difficult to come into (learning about classes, and
virtual machines and classpaths etc.) than C++, but still: A good choice.

If you ever plan to draw advantage out of your programming skills when it
comes to getting a job, then you should definitely learn either C++, C (with
the reservations mentioned above), Java or maybe Visual Basic (which is
probably out of the question since you don't want to buy something).

So long,
Johannes.

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