I have been thinking of learning some programming recently, but I don’t feel confident enough. Is there any point in beginning with something like Zig or Go, and switching to something more serious later?
Where did you get the idea that Zig is an “easy” language?
I get paid a whole lot to work solely in Deluge. which is the most painfully simple language ever. you want a join() built in? fuck you. sleep()? not allowed. you want a “for i in range()”? nope, they don’t do that here.
simple languages are often the most used in production unless you’re doing something highly specific that warrants a specific language.
Programming is a tool. Systems understanding is what has value. Pick a system you want to learn and actively build and fail consistently.
Repeated exposure to reality is the way to learn fast and gain confidence.
Anything is better than nothing.
Go and Zig are serious languages. Go is especially established and has a big ecosystem and capabilities. You could stick with Go forever if you don’t want to expand afterwards.
Starting ‘simpler’ is better because it gives you successes. It keeps you going.
crazy to call zig, a low level systems language, an “easy” language
Zig or Go are serious programming languages. Zig is actually the language I would least recommend for complete beginners because in my opinion it is one the most serious languages currently. What lead you to your examples Zig and Go and how do you determine what a ‘serious’ programming language is?
When I say “serious” I mean something widely used and expected on the labor market, like C++ or Java. I don’t really know the world of programming very well, so I may misjudge some languages for being not serious easily. Particularly with Zig, I heard it being called a “vibecoder language”
I learned with python and switched to rust when that started to piss me off. It’ll be awhile until you know enough about why you want a different language for a task. Until then, python and JavaScript are totally fine; you may never even need to leave those ecosystems depending on what you want to do.
no. You must start with malboge
True evil
It takes a long time to learn how to code (5-10 years I would say), and learning multiple languages will only make you a better programmer. Besides, you’re just starting out and have no idea how far you’re going to get… I personally failed the first few times I tried and didn’t really catch on until I was in university. Start with something easy, maybe learn something useful, then try a harder one. Starting with a harder language just increases the probability that you find it too hard and give up. And plenty of people start with easy languages and still fail anyway, so don’t take success for granted, even with an “easy” language.
In any case, code is just a tool to get a job done, so I would say start with finding a job that you want to do and then learn the coding you need to accomplish it. I personally learned how to code by using Python instead of a calculator for my science and engineering assignments in university. Besides that, it’s a great language for general purpose tasks on Linux/UNIX systems - you can use it for file sharing, task automation, writing chatbots, etc.
Writing games is another good source of motivation - you could use Pygame in Python, which has lots of tutorials that you could play around with. There’s also Godot too - you could just start by following the tutorial and playing around with some of the scripts to see what they do.
Any language is good to start with. When you learn a language pick one that makes sense to you. The main thing you are learning is not the language it’s how to change how you think about problems. From there the differences between languages are technical and any language can be conquered in time except JavaScript because fuck JavaScript.
Logic is common to all programming languages. Everything else is syntax and knowing what functions or utilities you can capitalize on. No matter how complex things seem under the hood it’s only one instruction at a time that is being processed. Speed and memory make it seem like multitasking. It’s as simple as “If this, then that”. Once you get the foundations of logic down, you’re good to go. Everything else is experience and time takes care of that. Good luck and have fun. As far as confidence goes my mantra throughout life, especially when faced with complex situations is a derisive “How hard can this be?”, while plodding forward.
Go is easy??
Right… I’ve been “programming” for 20+ years (though not as a developer). Something about golang just won’t click in head. May e it would be easier without the years of perl, tcl, and python. But I am sure it ain’t no “easy” language.
Go seems like a good option to begin with; you can do a lot with it, and it’s not that complicated but does expose you to concepts like pointers.
There are plenty of very “serious” systems written in Go (e.g. Kubernetes), it’s not a toy language.
Nothing is easy when learning programming from scratch and by yourself ; just choose whatever you feel is cool (at beginner level, it does not make a big difference).
Avoid the compilation process by using interpreted language
Zig and Go are serious. I think Python would be a language that isn’t serious (despite it’s widespread use in serious applications) but has a reputation for being easy. I don’t know if that reputation is really deserved.
Anyway I would start with one of Python, Go or Typescript (via Deno). I would avoid Rust, Haskell, OCaml, C++ as your very first language, but they could be your second.
Whatever you do don’t learn Python and stop there. That’s the way to be a crap programmer. And if you do use Python learn to use type hints early on.
1 agree with everything you wrote besides the Deno?
why Deno?
Typescript projects are a significant effort to set up with the traditional tooling (NPM & Node). With Deno you can literally just create a
.tsfile and run it.
