The Best Programming Language to Learn First

The first programming language that you should learn depends on lots of factors. For example, what type of problem are you looking to solve? Some languages are more suited to working in certain environments and performing specific tasks. Also, there is no universally accepted beginner language. If you ask ten different developers, you’re likely to get ten different answers. They most likely all took different first languages themselves and it’s also likely that most of the ones they took first aren’t even in existence anymore.

Become a Pro

Another factor to consider is if you want to be a professional programmer. If the answer is yes, then it would probably be wiser for you to learn one of a few different languages that can be used as building blocks. These types of languages will allow you to easily transition into to more advanced languages.

One such language that falls into this category is C. C is a machine level programming language that you can use to talk directly to the computer. You can tap into device drivers and make the computer perform lots of low-level tasks. Several other modern and widely used languages such as Java and C# evolved from C. Transitioning to C# and Java is much easier because you’re already familiar with the coding conventions and syntax. However, it’s these same conventions and syntactical rules that make C somewhat more complicated for beginners.

Find a New Hobby

If you’re not going to program professionally and just want to learn how to code as a hobby, then there are other languages where the syntax is easier to learn, and you can see progress very quickly. Visual Basic is one of these languages. The syntax is very forgiving, and the development environment is very helpful in auto-correcting syntax errors and giving you IntelliSense hints that help to guide you to the correct syntax. You also get code coloring that lets you know what different pieces of syntax are just by looking at them and you can tell a variable from a constant or an object by the color of its font in the editor.

Visual Basic is very easy to learn, but it is also very powerful. You can code console applications that do very basic tasks all the way through to very complicated websites and very powerful scientific applications. This will also help you to transition to C# since they can both be written in Microsoft Visual Studio. The IDE (Integrated Development Environment) works the same for both VB and C#, but the syntax is very different and more precise in C#.

However, if you learn a few languages then it gets progressively easier to learn new ones. This is especially true for object-oriented programming languages since the principals are the same, but maybe the syntax is just different.

What Type of App Do You Want to Write?

The type of application you want to write will be another consideration. If you want to write web applications, then you will need to learn HTML and JavaScript and also a back-end programming language such as PHP, Java, C# or Visual Basic. The first two are mostly used to govern the way the user interface looks and interacts with the server. The other languages perform specific tasks on the server when the web application post back from the browser.

If you plan on writing applications that will run on a Linux platform, then maybe Python should be your first language. Python is also fairly easy to learn. It takes fewer lines of code and there aren’t as many conventions at play as there are in some other object-oriented languages. Java is another programming language that will also run on either Linux or Windows.

Java is a very powerful programming language with volumes of canned code already written that you can plug into your code to accomplish specific tasks. You can also code web pages using Java. The two most powerful and widely used languages as of today are C# and Java. C# only runs on Microsoft Windows environments, but Java will run on either, which makes it to the choice for cross-platform programming.

Go Mobile

If you intend to go mobile, you can use Objective-C for iOS applications or Java for Android applications. However, you will also need to learn HTML and JavaScript if you plan on writing web applications for mobile devices. You can write web apps with the other programming languages, but you have to make sure that they look right on the mobile devices you are targeting. Web apps can work cross-platform if they are designed correctly from the start.

Whichever programming language you decide to learn first, it will be much easier to grasp with great, comprehensive training. At ONLC we offer classes on programming that can be taken from almost anywhere in the U.S through a network of remote learning establishments or provided online with a live, online instructor. Contact us today and discover how you can learn to program your own applications.