On Tue, 14 Apr 2015 03:59:15 -0700 (PDT) Rusi Mody <rustompm...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Tuesday, April 14, 2015 at 1:10:04 PM UTC+5:30, Petter Adsen wrote: > > That I can also accept. I see that a lot of people advice me on > > going with something other than C, and I can understand that there > > are good reasons for this advice. While I still want to learn C at > > some point, I'm beginning to think that it might be wise to > > consider getting a good foundation in another language first. > > In case it helps I saw this > > | And Rob Hagan at Monash had shown that you could teach students > more COBOL | with one semester of Scheme and one semester of COBOL > than you could with | three semesters of COBOL. > from here > https://groups.google.com/d/msg/erlang-programming/5X1irAmLMD8/qCQJ11Y5jEAJ > > What that is saying is that priming your learning curve is more > important than what you learn. And COBOL (like C) is a terrible way > to do that
I understand. > And if you still need convincing that C is a painful intro to > programming, please read section 4 of > http://www.the-magus.in/Publications/chor.pdf The first few pages was enough to support your statement :) > Beyond that what you should take up really depends on what calls you: > - python is nice if its scripts Well, on a practical level I need something that can be used for sysadmin tasks, preferably in a way that is somewhat portable. If it can also be used to learn basic GUI programming, then that is a big bonus. Digging into system internals is also interesting. > - something else (haskell?) or maybe something more esoteric like > Julia, APL if its mathematical "Esoteric" may be fascinating, but I need something where I can find online resources and support, so nothing too weird. > - etc > ie choose a language that optimizes an area that primarily calls you > > > > > Would Python be appropriate? I see a lot of software these days > > that is written in Python, so it would be helpful in that way. > > Specifically for linux system-level stuff, python will give you > 80-90% of the C level stuff at ⅕ the pain. > eg for TCP/IP networking look at > https://docs.python.org/2/library/socket.html OK, that sounds reasonable. I am looking at books that I can purchase online, does anyone know if "Learning Python" from O'Reilly is decent? Petter -- "I'm ionized" "Are you sure?" "I'm positive."
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