It really depends on your reasons for learning a programming language.

COBOL is very structured and probably the closest to English in its syntax. Learning that would at least help you to think in logical blocks.

It is however less widely used outside of business applications.

Visual Basic is the easiest to learn, but you aren't likely to gain as much insight into how program code is constructed.

It is also limited to Windows systems.

C is the most widely used, and the most unforgiving of errors. It can be very frustrating at first, as it is all too easy to cause your machine to reset with an errant variable value.

If you can get the hang of coding nearer the machine level, then C is the most powerful of the three, and can even be integrated with Perl to a certain extent.

The best advice I can give you is to learn about program design techniques and planning before getting too deeply involved in any language. (This should be part of the course anyway.)

Once you understand program flow concepts, learning how to code them in a particular language will be much easier, and with careful planning you will spend less time debugging.

__________
"Every program has at least one bug and can be shortened by at least one instruction -- from which, by induction, one can deduce that every program can be reduced to one instruction which doesn't work." -- (Author Unknown)

In reply to Re: Which language would be most helpful? by Wysardry
in thread Which language would be most helpful? by mrpilot

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