About programing, a general question

[Jerry Feldman]

On 12/18/2010 03:40 PM, Parshwa Murdia wrote:
> That's nice, but starting with the pointers is not good, I guess and
> hope as to learn pointeers, the things prior to pointers should be
> well grasped and someone told me, e.g., arrays and loops. 
I agree. The important part of computer programming (and I have been a
programmer for 45 years) is that you understand the basic concepts as
well as data structures initially. A language like C can get you in
trouble very fast. IMHO, Pascal was a decent language to learn some of
these concepts. IMHO, Python is an excellent first language in that it
behaves as a regular computer language, and also supports object
orientation. But, you need to learn what a variable is, what  integers,
floats, characters, and strings are. These are the basics, but if you do
not understand how integers work using twos complement arithmetic, your
programs might fail and you may not know why. Additionally, you need to
know the basic structures, like stacks (where in C and C++ your
automatic variables reside) and arrays. I personally don't like Perl as
a language to create applications, but I find it very useful for
scripting. As Parshwa intimates, pointers is an advanced topic and
requires a lot of understanding, and is not a good concept to start on.

-- 
Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB  CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846


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