[NTLUG:Discuss] Wanting to speak the language

[Robert Citek]

On Wednesday, Feb 23, 2005, at 23:07 US/Central, Paul Ingendorf wrote:
> Hmm religious wars.  Find a friend you respect in the tech field ask 
> what
> languages they love and start in on it.  You will have a ready made 
> resource
> for questions you might have about the languages specific constructs 
> and you
> will not start a religious war over what a community thinks is best 
> for you
> to start off with.

For a different twist, I'm wondering if you could learn more than one 
language at a time.  In other words, I'm wondering if you could pick 
six languages (e.g. bash, perl, C, Java, python, guile) and write a 
"Hello World" program in each.   Put a time limit on each (say one 
hour) and see how far you get in each.  When the time limit is up, put 
it aside and move to the next language.  Then cycle back and put a 
limit to the number of times you cycle through the languages, e.g three 
times.  Which one finishes first? second? third?

As Paul mentions, you can turn this into a social project.  For the 
ones you cannot finish or had difficulty, find someone who loves that 
language and ask them if you can ask them questions.

Once you've done a "Hello World" program, go into a little more depth 
with each language.  For example, next you could explore flow control 
by printing a sequence of numbers from say 1 to 100.  Again, if you 
have difficulty, find an expert and ask for guidance.

Lastly, tackle simple data types: integers, characters, strings, arrays.

If none of those six languages grabbed your interest, pick another set 
(e.g. ruby, php, JavaScript, squeak, C++, tcl).  The purpose of this 
exercise wouldn't be to become a master of a language, but rather to 
help you decide which language you do want to be a master of first.  
Also, you will hopefully be building a good relationship with experts 
in the field.

Where's a good place to find experts to help you with a language?  
Probably right here on this list.  If nothing else, people here should 
be able to point you in the right direction, e.g. to local language 
user groups.

Just a thought.  And be sure to let us know how things go.

Regards,
- Robert
http://www.cwelug.org/downloads
Help others get OpenSource software.  Distribute FLOSS
for Windows, Linux, *BSD, and MacOS X with BitTorrent