Which programming language is best to learn first?

I'd like to learn a programming language so I'd appreciate if any experienced programmers could provide me with some kind guidance on which programming language is best to learn first.

Reply 1

quickquestion805

I heard pythons a good language for beginners

Reply 2

Shreyas Nandi

Original post by userx805

I heard pythons a good language for beginners.

Could you elaborate on why you think it might be a good starter language?

Reply 3

quickquestion805

Original post by Shreyas Nandi

Could you elaborate on why you think it might be a good starter language?

I'm a beginner myself so take it with a grain of salt. From what I've heard it's one of the easier languages, so that's probably one reason. Sorry I couldn't be much help

Reply 4

username5304322

Maybe start with HTML. It's not really a programming language but I think it's a good way to ease into things.

Reply 5

tjcefc1

Python is the easiest to understand, and it is pretty close to english so you might find it easier to read
HTML might be good to help get you into things, but its a markup language to make websites, not a coding language

Reply 6

RIP my money

If you want to learn the concepts, I recommend learning C from the CS50 Harvard course. It is the hardest but teaches all the main concepts. Then learning other languages is really easy

Reply 7

Intermit

I've been a software engineer for years, started hiring new recruits and this is my recommendation for beginners:

1. Java
2. Python
3. JavaScript

Contrary to popular belief, Python is not a good programming language to start. Yes, it is simple and easy to understand, but it doesn't give beginners strong concepts on programming. Java has strong programming fundamentals that are shared between other programming languages, making it easier to transition into. Once you understand the basics of Java, other languages such as Python and JavaScript will be easier to followthrough. Python second place because it's built specifically to make programmers' life easier, so much more flexibility. JavaScript third because it's a popular and rising language. No need to master, just understand the fundamentals if you want.

Also, as a bonus, recruiters don't hire people for the number of languages they learn. They hire people for their thinking and coding abilities. Trust me, try and master 1 language, and the rest treat it as a hobby. Trying to master a lot of languages as a beginner will be a waste of effort and time.

Reply 8

Mojmeer

Everyone should start with Python (3) no point using anything else as the starting point.

Reply 9

Plagioclase

Depends on what you're learning programming for but if the end-goal is science, python.

Reply 10

BeADan

I started by trying C++, but wanted to make a website game so switched to PHP, then after a while learned javascript and then C#. (I've done a little bit of programming in a few other languages too)

My favourite is C#. The dotNet framework is excellent.

I wouldn't recommend PHP as a good entry level language, and overall don't like it at all.
C# would be an excellent language to learn as a beginner, because it enforces static variable types and builds good habits with code separation into classes for object oriented programming.

C# would allow you to ignore UI design for a while by using winforms for your controls, and it's drag and drop interface in visual studio.

If you're interested mainly in the Web then javascript is a good language, but only manageable for a proper project if you use a javascript framework, so I would learn alongside a framework such as Vue, React or Angular.
Bear in mind though that WebAssembly is really coming along now and C# will be compiling to run directly in browsers in the near future. Javascript might be dethroned when that happens.
In my opinion C# is a much more manageable language to program in and IDEs are far more capable at hinting and improving code.
Typescript is very good, but you lose a lot of the benefits of javascript (thousands of libraries), that don't have typings available.

So my vote would be C#, it has a similar style and syntax to Java, but it's less verbose.
It is cross platform (you still need a specific platform ui though) and can run on servers using asp.Net.