As I started to write my guide for beginner programmers, the first subject I had to address was choosing the programming language I will use in order to explain and demonstrate programming concepts and exercises.
I knew I wanted to use a language that is used directly on the programmer’s PC, and not a language the is mostly used on server side, so it will have minimum installation and configuration requirement before we can start writing and running sample code.
At that moment I could rule out PHP, ASP, javascript (which is meant to run mostly inside web pages), python, perl, etc…
The most common client side programming languages I know are C, C++, Java and C# (.NET).
I wanted an Object Oriented Programming language, so C is out of the question, even though it can be the most suitable language in order to learn the basics, like functions, variables, conditions and loops.
I also wanted a language that is platform independent, so C# was ruled out as it’s mostly used on Microsoft Windows OS.
Now I had to choose between C++ and Java, and I chose Java mainly because it can be used on Android OS and that you don’t have to consider OS specific APIs in order to develop standard applications that can be run on almost any device.
Also – after learning the main programming concepts using Java, it can be pretty easily be transformed to any other programming language.
Feel free to leave a comment.
Cheers!