On 7/29/2011 19:39, H. Karsten wrote:
> Maybe I should give myself a push and move-one to c++.
> As well I thought to go to Forth maybe, because of the stack, that makes it
> possible to get lots and lots of results, coming from just one function.

You know, as a novice programmer, I wouldn't go with either of those.

If you make a mistake in C++, it can be extremely confusing to figure out 
where the mistake is.  Just like C.  And, indeed, Forth is just as bad in 
that respect.(*) Both Forth and C++ are low-level powerful languages, full 
of amazing capabilities, but easy to screw up in hard-to-fix ways.

I would recommend that if you want to learn something powerful as a first 
step, you consider Python or perhaps Ruby. Once you're comfortable writing a 
few hundred lines of code, or getting 1000 lines of your own code working 
without giving up and tearing your hair out, you'll be in a much better 
position to learn things that sacrifice easiness for speed. *Then* decide 
whether you want to learn C++ so you can program system tools compatible 
with everyone else, or learn Forth so you can write your own custom computer 
languages easily, or whatever you want to do.

Smalltalk might also be a good choice, except that it's "strange" and 
therefore might make learning things that are more "normal" difficult. For 
example, Smalltalk pretends to be the entire operating system, so there's no 
real concept of a Smalltalk "program".


(*) In spite of having written two Forth interpreters in assembly language, 
I don't think I ever got a Forth procedure more than 5 lines long to work, 
regardless of how long I tried to debug.
-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   How come I never get only one kudo?

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