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Good Book for "Beginners Programming"

seachto7

Hello all,

I was going to sign up to do a beginners programming course, but thought maybe I could just buy a book for a fraction of the cost, and do it myself at home. I would already have a basic idea of HTML and javascript, as in I know what symbols mean etc, but I don't have much experience actually using the code, so I thought I would like to brush up on this area.

I was looking at the programming for dummies book. I have used these books before for different things, and find that they are ok, and easily explained.

But if there are any other suggestions, great....

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Jonathan

What language are you interested in learning?

seachto7

silly me. I should have expanded. I'm not 100% sure which language to try and learn. I have been told that some php would be useful to know
(in the area of technical writing).
or javascript. I don't specifically need to learn any of them for work at the moment, but would like to know more about some basic programming languages

BleedTheF!FtH

Im doing a computer coarse at the moment in itc and my lecturer claims that java is the best language to learn in order to grasp an understanding of basic programming..

snappieT

I think Java is a good language to get a grasp on the basic concepts without worrying about memory allocation, garbage collection and other nasties.

For a first shot, try Java: the all in one desk reference for dummies

I found it quite good when i first got programming, and it is very lightweight. It is a big book, but very accessible, and you only need to read as far as you want to. You can stop anywhere, and be able to code upto that level.

Good luck!

AlmightyCushion

Moved from Comp And Tech.

towel401

PHP would be a good language to learn, and it is somewhat possible to write GUI applications with it or at least some half decent command-line stuff. javascript is fairly limited in what it can do when it comes to modifying files and socket programming but my views are biased (see the thread i made).

PHP is also very well documented. their website explains every function in detail and they have the downloadable version of the manual that you can print off or look at on another screen

Jonathan

towel401 wrote: »

PHP would be a good language to learn, and it is somewhat possible to write GUI applications with it or at least some half decent command-line stuff. javascript is fairly limited in what it can do when it comes to modifying files and socket programming but my views are biased (see the thread i made).

PHP is also very well documented. their website explains every function in detail and they have the downloadable version of the manual that you can print off or look at on another screen

PHP is very cool indeed. Easy to learn and fantastic support site too.

However, PHP is not going to teach you proper programming concepts etc, so for that reason I'd recommend a lower level language.

seachto7

cheers folks. I've heard that php is hard to learn, though useful..??
I might make a choice between javascript or php....

Jonathan

seachto7 wrote: »

cheers folks. I've heard that php is hard to learn, though useful..??
I might make a choice between javascript or php....

PHP is more powerful as it is processed server side.

If you are looking for simple examples of what can be done with PHP, have a look here at my various scripts, the page itself is actually a PHP script itself too. I never have to update that webpage, just stick a folder up in the directory and it will update the webpage automatically.

Less than half of those could be done using javascript.

Chardee MacDennis

www.greenteapress.com/thinkpython/thinkCSpy.pdf

How to think like a computer scientist books are very good, you can get them in most popular languages. python is a very good place to start imo, not too complicated and quite useful...

seachto7

that's great folks. I'll have a mull over it for a few days and decide what to go for...

Tableman

Is it possible to become a good programmer through learning? Or is it more related to natural abaility?

I have heard on so many occassions that people are just "gifted" at programming...

stephenlane80

Tableman wrote: »

I have heard on so many occassions that people are just "gifted" at programming...

In my opinion these gifted people:

a) work with non-programmers who think they are gifted cause the don't know any better

b) work with programmers of less experience who think they are gifted cause they don't know any better

c)full of s**t and imply to people that they are gifted

Good programmers spend a lot of time learning, have a lot of experience and have a genuine interest for what they do