Basic Programming (no, Not Basic)

[JonathanLee]

Hi W3Schools,I'm looking for a simple programming language that I could use as a stepping stone to more complicated languages. If anyone has suggestions about where to start, please tell me.Also, what is the difference between all the C languages? Which is the easiest to learn? Sorry, I really m a programming newbie Thanks,Jonathan

[justsomeguy]

I would start with Javascript, it has all of the control statements you'll need to know for any language, and you don't need to download anything to use it, it already runs in your browser. You can do a lot with Javascript without necessarily needing a web page, it's easy enough to just set up a blank page to run whatever code you want. I would also recommend that you use Firebug with Firefox to help, Firebug provides a good output console to use for writing your output from Javascript. Since Javascript runs in a browser it's also easy to set up a little user interface where you can click on buttons to run certain pieces of code, or to give input to the code.

Also, what is the difference between all the C languages?

If you're talking about C, C++, and C#, they came about in that order. C is the oldest, C++ supports all of C and adds several object-oriented features and several other things, and C# is more recent than C++. There are too many individual differences to list all of them, they're essentially just updates to add similar features that other languages came about with. C is probably the easiest of them to learn, C is a really small and basic language, but provides a powerful foundation for other libraries and things.

[Synook]

I wouldn't learn C (at least as a first language), it's outdated and doesn't provide a good foundation to other more modern languages, many of which are object-oriented. You find yourself writing procedurally inside the main methods .Also, I wouldn't say C++ was more complicated than C, as since C is really old it maintains many low-level features that are of little use to study unless you are planning to learn other low-level languages (e.g. Assembler) or write high-performance applications (e.g. games). In most cases, I would advocate C++ over C.