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XiXiDu comments on Open Thread: March 2010 - Less Wrong
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What programming language should I learn?
As part of my long journey towards a decent education, I assume, it is mandatory to learn computer programming.
I'm thinking about starting with Processing and Lua. What do you think?
In an amazing coincidence, many of the suggestions you get will be the suggester's current favorite language. Many of these recommendations will be esoteric or unpopular languages. These people will say you should learn language X first because of the various features language X. They'll forget that they did not learn language X first, and while language X is powerful, it might not be easy to set up a development environment. Tutorials might be lacking. Newbie support might be lacking. Etc.
Others have said this but you can't hear it enough: It is not mandatory to learn computer programming. If you force yourself, you probably won't enjoy it.
So, what language should you learn first? Well the answer is... (drumroll) it depends! Mostly, it depends on what you are trying to do. (Side note: You can get a lot of help on mailing lists or IRC if you say, "I'm trying to do X." instead of, "I'm having a problem getting feature blah blah blah to work.")
I paused after reading this. The main way people learn to program is by writing programs and getting feedback from peers/mentors. If you're not coding something you find interesting, it's hard to stay motivated for long enough to learn the language.
My advice is to learn a language that a lot of people learn as a first language. You'll be able to take advantage of tutorials and support geared toward newbies. You can always learn "cooler" languages later, but if you start with something advanced you might give up in frustration. Common first languages in CS programs are Java and C++, but Python is catching on pretty quickly. It also helps if your first language is used by people you already know. That way they'll be able to mentor/advise you.
Finally, I should give some of my background. I've been writing code for a while. I write code for work and leisure. My first language was QBasic. I moved on to C, C++, TI-BASIC, Perl, PHP, Java, C#, Ruby, and some others. I've played with but don't really know Lisp, Lua, and Haskell. My favorite language right now is Python, but I'm probably still in the honeymoon phase since I've been using it for less than a year.
Argh, see what I said at the start? I recommended Python and my favorite language is currently Python!
Motivation is not my problem these days. It has been all my youth, partly the reason that I completely failed at school. Now the almost primal fear of staying dumb and a nagging curiosity to gather knowledge, learn and understand, do trump any lack of motivation or boredom. To see how far above you people, here at lesswrong.com, are compared to the average person makes me strive to approximate your wit.
In other words, it's already enough motivation to know the basics of a programming language like Haskell, when average Joe is hardly self-aware but a mere puppet. I don't want to be one of them anymore.
If motivation is no longer a problem for you, that could be something really interesting for the akrasia discussions. What changed so that motivation is no longer a problem?
Thank you very much for writing this up. It wouldn't surprise me a bit if akrasia has a neurological basis, and I'm a little surprised that I haven't seen any posts really looking at it from that angle. Dopamine?
And on the other hand, your story is also about ideas and circumstances that undercut motivation.
What I want is to be able understand, attain a more intuitive comprehension, of concepts associated with other fields that I'm interested in, which I assume are important. As a simple example, take this comment by RobinZ. Not that I don't understand that simple statement. As I said, I already know the 'basics' of programming. I thoroughly understand it. Just so you get an idea.
In addition to reading up on all lesswrong.com sequences, I'm mainly into mathematics and physics right now. That's where I have the biggest deficits. I see my planned 'study' of programming to be more as practise of logical thinking and as a underlying matrix to grasp fields liked computer science and concepts as that of a 'Turing machine'.
And I do not agree that the effect is nil. I believe that programming is one of the foundations necessary to understand. I believe that there are 4 cornerstones underlying human comprehension. From there you can go everywhere: Mathematics, Physics, Linguistics and Programming (formal languages, calculation/data processing/computation, symbolic manipulation). The art of computer programming is closely related to the basics of all that is important, information.
As mentioned in another comment, the best introduction to programming is probably SICP. I recommend going with this route, as trying to learn programming from language-specific tutorials will almost certainly not give you an adequate understanding of fundamental programming concepts.
After that, you will probably want to start dabbling in a variety of programming styles. You could perhaps learn some C for imperative programming, Java for object-oriented, Python for a high-level hybrid approach, and Haskell for functional programming as starters. If you desire more programming knowledge you can branch out from there, but this seems to be a good start.
Just keep in mind that when starting out learning programming, it's probably more important to dabble in as many different languages as you can. Doing this successfully will enable you to quickly learn any language you may need to know. I admit I may be biased in this assessment, though, as I tend to get bored focusing on any one topic for long periods of time.
Processing and Lua seem pretty exotic to me. How did you hear of them? If you know people who use a particular language, that's a pretty good reason to choose it.
Even if you don't have a goal in mind, I would recommend choosing a language with applications in mind to keep you motivated. For example, if (but only if) you play wow, I would recommend Lua; or if the graphical applications of Processing appeal to you, then I'd recommend it. If you play with web pages, javascript...
At least that's my advice for one style of learning, a style suggested by your mention of those two languages, but almost opposite from your "Nevertheless, I want to start from the very beginning," which suggests something like SICP. There are probably similar courses built around OCaml. The proliferation of monad tutorials suggests that the courses built around Haskell don't work. That's not to disagree with wnoise about the value of Haskell either practical or educational, but I'm skeptical about it as an introduction.
ETA: SICP is a textbook using Scheme (Lisp). Lisp or OCaml seems like a good stepping-stone to Haskell. Monads are like burritos.
Eh, monads are an extremely simple concept with a scary-sounding name, and not the only example of such in Haskell.
The problem is that Haskell encourages a degree of abstraction that would be absurd in most other languages, and tends to borrow mathematical terminology for those abstractions, instead of inventing arbitrary new jargon the way most other languages would.
So you end up with newcomers to Haskell trying to simultaneously:
And the final blow is that the type of programming problem that the monad abstraction so elegantly captures is almost precisely the set of problems that look simple in most other languages.
But some people stick with it anyway, until eventually something clicks and they realize just how simple the whole monad thing is. Having at that point, in the throes of comprehension, already forgotten what it was to be confused, they promptly go write yet another "monad tutorial" filled with half-baked metaphors and misleading analogies to concrete concepts, perpetuating the idea that monads are some incredibly arcane, challenging concept.
The whole circus makes for an excellent demonstration of the sort of thing Eliezer complains about in regards to explaining things being hard.
I learnt about Lua thru Metaplace, which is now dead. I heard about Processing via Anders Sandberg.
I'm always fascinated by data visualisation. I thought Processing might come in handy.
Thanks for mentioning SICP. I'll check it out.
I'm going through SICP now. I'm not getting as much out of it as I expected, because much of it I already know, is uninteresting to me since I expect lazy evaluation due to Haskell, or is just tedious (I got sick pretty quick with the authors' hard-on for number theory).
SICP is nice if you've never seen a lambda abstraction before; its value decreases monotonically with increasing exposure to functional programming. You can probably safely skim the majority of it, at most do a handful of the exercises that don't immediately make you yawn just by looking at them.
Scheme isn't much more than an impure, strict untyped λ-calculus; it seems embarrassingly simple (which is also its charm!) from the perspective of someone comfortable working in a pure, non-strict bastardization of some fragment of System F-ω or whatever it is that GHC is these days.
Haskell does tend to ruin one for other languages, though lately I've been getting slightly frustrated with some of Haskell's own limitations...
Consider finding a Coding Dojo near your location.
There is a subtle but deep distinction between learning a programming language and learning how to program. The latter is more important and abstracts away from any particular language or any particular programming paradigm.
To get a feeling for the difference, look at this animation of Paul Graham writing an article - crossing the chasm between ideas in his head and ideas expressed in words. (Compared to personal experience this "demo" simplifies the process of writing an article considerably, but it illustrates neatly what books can't teach about writing.)
What I mean by "learning how to program" is the analogue of that animation in the context of writing code. It isn't the same as learning to design algorithms or data structures. It is what you'll learn about getting from algorithms or data structures in your head to algorithms expressed in code.
Coding Dojos are an opportunity to pick up these largely untaught skills from experienced programmers.
I agree with everything Emile and AngryParsley said. I program for work and for play, and use Python when I can get away with it. You can be shocked, that like AngryParsley, I will recommend my favorite language!
I have an additional recommendation though: to learn to program, you need to have questions to answer. My favorite source for fun programming problems is ProjectEuler. It's very math-heavy, and it sounds like you might like learning the math as much as learning the programming. Additionally, every problem, once solved, has a forum thread opened where many people post their solutions in many languages. Seeing better solutions to a problem you just solved on your own is a great way to rapidly advance.
I think the path outlined in ESR's How to Become a Hacker is pretty good. Python is in my opinion far and away the best choice as a first language, but Haskell as a second or subsequent language isn't a bad idea at all. Perl is no longer important; you probably need never learn it.
Relevant answer to this question here, recently popularized on Hacker News.
I'd weakly recommend Python, it's free, easy enough, powerful enough to do simple but useful things (rename and reorganize files, extract data from text files, generate simple html pages ...),is well-designed and has features you'll encounter in other languages (classes, functional programming ...), and has a nifty interactive command line in which to experiment quickly. Also, some pretty good websites run on it.
But a lot of those advantages apply to languages like Ruby.
If you want to go into more exotic languages, I'd suggest Scheme over Haskell, it seems more beginner-friendly to me.
It mostly depends on what occasions you'll have of using it : if you have a website, Javascript might be better; If you like making game mods, go for lua. It also depends of who you know that can answer questions. If you have a good friend who's a good teacher and a Java expert, go for Java.
Personally, I'm a big fan of Haskell. It will make your brain hurt, but that's part of the point -- it's very good at easily creating and using mathematically sound abstractions. I'm not a big fan of Lua, though it's a perfectly reasonable choice for its niche of embeddable scripting language. I have no experience with Processing. The most commonly recommended starting language is python, and it's not a bad choice at all.
Toss in another vote for Haskell. It was my first language (and back before Real World Haskell was written); I'm happy with that choice - there were difficult patches, but they came with better understanding.
Thanks, I didn't know about Haskell, sounds great. Open source and all. I think you already convinced me.
I wouldn't recommend Haskell as a first language. I'm a fan of Haskell, and the idea of learning Haskell first is certainly intriguing, but it's hard to learn, hard to wrap your head around sometimes, and the documentation is usually written for people who are at least computer science grad student level. I'm not saying it's necessarily a bad idea to start with Haskell, but I think you'd have a much easier time getting started with Python.
Python is open source, thoroughly pleasant, widely used and well-supported, and is a remarkably easy language to learn and use, without being a "training wheels" language. I would start with Python, then learn C and Lisp and Haskell. Learn those four, and you will definitely have achieved your goal of learning to program.
And above all, write code. This should go without saying, but you'd be amazed how many people think that learning to program consists mostly of learning a bunch of syntax.
I have to disagree on Python; I think consistency and minimalism are the most important things in an "introductory" language, if the goal is to learn the field, rather than just getting as quickly as possible to solving well-understood tasks. Python is better than many, but has too many awkward bits that people who already know programming don't think about.
I'd lean toward either C (for learning the "pushing electrons around silicon" end of things) or Scheme (for learning the "abstract conceptual elegance" end of things). It helps that both have excellent learning materials available.
Haskell is a good choice for someone with a strong math background (and I mean serious abstract math, not simplistic glorified arithmetic like, say, calculus) or someone who already knows some "mainstream" programming and wants to stretch their brain.
You make some good points, but I still disagree with you. For someone who's trying to learn to program, I believe that the primary goal should be getting quickly to the point where you can solve well-understood tasks. I've always thought that the quickest way to learn programming was to do programming, and until you've been doing it for a while, you won't understand it.
Well, I admit that my thoughts are colored somewhat by an impression--acquired by having made a living from programming for some years--that there are plenty of people who have been doing it for quite a while without, in fact, having any understanding whatsoever. Observe also the abysmal state of affairs regarding the expected quality of software; I marvel that anyone has the audacity to use the phrase "software engineer" with a straight face! But I'll leave it at that, lest I start quoting Dijkstra.
Back on topic, I do agree that being able to start doing things quickly--both in terms of producing interesting results and getting rapid feedback--is important, but not the most important thing.
I want to achieve an understanding of the basics without necessarily being able to be a productive programmer. I want to get a grasp of the underlying nature of computer science, not being able to mechanical write and parse code to solve certain problems. The big picture and underlying nature is what I'm looking for.
I agree that many people do not understand, they really only learnt how to mechanical use something. How much does the average person know about how one of our simplest tools work, the knife? What does it mean to cut something? What does the act of cutting accomplish? How does it work?
We all know how to use this particular tool. We think it is obvious, thus we do not contemplate it any further. But most of us have no idea what actually physically happens. We are ignorant of the underlying mechanisms for that we think we understand. We are quick to conclude that there is nothing more to learn here. But there is deep knowledge to be found in what might superficially appear to be simple and obvious.
Then you do not, in fact, need to learn to program. You need an actual CS text, covering finite automata, pushdown machines, Turing machines, etc. Learning to program will illustrate and fix these concepts more closely, and is a good general skill to have.
Recommendations on the above? Books, essays...
I, unfortunately, am merely an engineer with a little BASIC and MATLAB experience, but if it is computer science you are interested in, rather than coding, count this as another vote for SICP. Kernighan and Ritchie is also spoken of in reverent tones (edit: but as a manual for C, not an introductory book - see below), as is The Art of Computer Programming by Knuth.
I have physically seen these books, but not studied any of them - I'm just communicating a secondhand impression of the conventional wisdom. Weight accordingly.
Kernighan and Ritchie is a fine book, with crystal clear writing. But I tend to think of it as "C for experienced programmers", not "learn programming through C".
TAoCP is "learn computer science", which I think is rather different than learning programming. Again, a fine book, but not quite on target initially.
I've only flipped through SICP, so I have little to say.
Merely an engineer? I've failed to acquire a leaving certificate of the lowest kind of school we have here in Germany.
Thanks for the hint at Knuth, though I already came across his work yesterday. Kernighan and Ritchie are new to me. SICP is officially on my must-read list now.
Bear in mind that I'm not terribly familiar with most modern programming languages, but it sounds to me like what you want to do is learn some form of Basic, where very little is handled for you by built-in abilities of the language. (There are languages that handle even less for you, but those really aren't for beginners.) I'd suggest also learning a bit of some more modern language as well, so that you can follow conversations about concepts that Basic doesn't cover.
'Follow conversations', indeed. That's what I mean. Being able to grasp concepts that involve 'symbolic computation' and information processing by means of formal language. I don't aim at actively taking part in productive programming. I don't want to become a poet, I want to be able to appreciate poetry, perceive its beauty.
Take English as an example. Only a few years ago I seriously started to learn English. Before I could merely chat while playing computer games LOL. Now I can read and understand essays by Eliezer Yudkowsky. Though I cannot write the like myself, English opened up this whole new world of lore for me.
"It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration." --Edsger W Dijkstra.
More modern versions aren't that bad, and it's not quite fair to tar them with the same brush, but I still wouldn't recommend learning any of them for their own sake. If there is a need (like modifying an existing codebase), then by all means do.
Yeah, you won't be able to be very productive regarding bottom-up groundwork. But you'll be able to look into existing works and gain insights. Even if you forgot a lot, something will be stuck and help you to pursue a top-down approach. You'll be able to look into existing code, edit it and regain or learn new and lost knowledge more quickly.
Agree with where you place Python, Scheme and Haskell. But I don't recommend C. Don't waste time there until you already know how to program well.
Given a choice on what I would begin with if I had my time again I would go with Scheme, since it teaches the most general programming skills, which will carry over to whichever language you choose (and to your thinking in general.) Then I would probably move on to Ruby, so that I had, you know, a language that people actually use and create libraries for.
C is good for learning about how the machine really works. Better would be assembly of some sort, but C has better tool support. Given more recent comments, though I don't think that's really what XiXiDu is looking for.
Agree on where C is useful and got the same impression about the applicability to XiXiDu's (where on earth does that name come from?!?) goals.
I'm interested in where you would put C++ in this picture. It gives a thorough understanding of how the machine works, in particular when used for OO programming. I suppose it doesn't meet your 'minimalist' ideal but does have the advantage that mastering it will give you other abstract proficiencies that more restricted languages will not. Knowing how and when to use templates, multiple inheritance or the combination thereof is handy, even now that I've converted to primarily using a language that relies on duck-typing.
"Actually I made up the term "object-oriented", and I can tell you I did not have C++ in mind." -- Alan Kay
C++ is the best example of what I would encourage beginners to avoid. In fact I would encourage veterans to avoid it as well; anyone who can't prepare an impromptu 20k-word essay on why using C++ is a bad idea should under no circumstances consider using the language.
C++ is an ill-considered, ad hoc mixture of conflicting, half-implemented ideas that borrows more problems than advantages:
I could elaborate further, but it's too depressing to think about. For understanding the machine, stick with C. For learning OOP or metaprogramming, better to find a language that actually does it right. Smalltalk is kind of the canonical "real" OO language, but I'd probably point people toward Ruby as a starting point (as a bonus, it also has some fun metaprogramming facilities).
ETA: Well, that came out awkwardly verbose. Apologies.
I'm sure I could manage 1k before I considered the point settled and moved on to a language that isn't a decades old hack. That said, many of the languages (Java, .NET) that seek to work around the problems in C++ do so extremely poorly and inhibit understanding of the way the relevant abstractions could be useful. The addition of mechanisms for genericity to both of those of course eliminates much of that problem. I must add that many of the objections I have to using C++ also apply to C, where complexity based problems are obviously excluded. Similarly, any reasons I would actually suggest C is worth learning apply to C++ too. If you really must learn how things work at the bare fundamentals then C++ will give you that over a broader area of nuts and bolts.
This is the one point I disagree with, and I do so both on the assertion 'almost uniformly' and also the concept itself. As far as experts in Object Oriented programming goes Bertrand Myers is considered an expert, and his book 'Object Oriented Software Construction' is extremely popular. After using Eiffel for a while it becomes clear that any problems with multiple inheritance are a problem of implementation and poor language design and not inherent to the mechanism. In fact, (similar, inheritance based OO) languages that forbid multiple inheritance end up creating all sorts of idioms and language kludges to work around the arbitrary restriction.
Even while using Ruby (and the flexibility of duck-typing) I have discovered that the limitation to single inheritance sometimes requires inelegant work-arounds. Sometimes objects just are more than one type.
I put C++ as a "learn only if needed language". It's extremely large and complicated, perhaps even baroque. Any large program uses a slightly different dialect of C++ given by which features the writers are willing to use, and which are considered too dangerous.
Yeah, C is probably mandatory if you want to be serious with computer programming. Thanks for mentioning Scheme, haven't heard about it before...
Haskell sounds really difficult. But the more I hear how hard it is, the more intrigued I am.
Thanks, I'll sure get into those languages. But I think I'll just try and see if I can get into Haskell first. I'm intrigued after reading the introduction.
If I get struck, I'll the route you mentioned.
My first language was, awfully enough, GW-Basic. It had line numbers. I don't recommend anything like it.
My first real programming language was Perl. Perl is... fun. ;)
I recommend Haskell (more fun) or Ruby (more mainstream).
I recommend Python as well. Python has clean syntax, enforces good indentation and code layout, has a large number of very useful libraries, doesn't require a lot of boilerplate to get going but still has good mechanisms for structuring code, has good support for a variety of data structures built in, a read-eval-print loop for playing around with the language, and a lot more. If you want to learn to program, learn Python.
(Processing is probably very good, too, for interesting you in programming. It gives immediate visual feedback, which is nice, but it isn't quite as general purpose as Python. Lua I know very little about.)
That being said, Python does very little checking for errors before you run your code, and so is not particularly well suited for large or even medium sized, complex programs where your own reasoning is not sufficient to find errors. For these, I'd recommend learning other languages later on. Java is probably a good second language. It requires quite a bit more infrastructure to get something up and running, but it has great libraries and steadily increasing ability to track down errors in code when it is compiled.
After that, it depends on what you want to do. I would recommend Haskell if you are looking to stretch your mind (or OCaml if you are looking to stretch it a little less ;-)). On the other hand, if you are looking to write useful programs, C is probably pretty good, and will teach you more about how computers work. C++ is popular for a lot of applications, so you may want to learn it, but I hate it as an unprincipled mess of language features half-hazardly thrown together. I'd say exactly the same thing about most web languages (Javascript (which is very different from Java), Ruby, PHP, etc.) Perl is incredibly useful for small things, but very hard to reason about.
(As to AngryParsley's comment about people recommending their favorite languages, mine are probably C, Haskell and OCaml, which I am not recommending first.)
Those two seem great, Lua in particular seems to match exactly the purpose you describe.