I have been thinking of learning some programming recently, but I don’t feel confident enough. Is there any point in beginning with something like Zig or Go, and switching to something more serious later?
Learing the bases of programming is language agnostic really. You can start even with pseudo code, then learn the language you will like to work with. Just choose any language that seems fun and enjoy the process.
Good luck!
The big parts are philosophy and libraries, learning a language is relatively easy.
Avoid BASIC though, never had much use of the hours I spent on it as a preteen.
I did learn alot of useful stuff when I was playind around with arduinos, and since then the market of fun microcontrollers have expandes quite a bit. Its great to see your code immediatly change stuff in the real world even if its just a basic display connected to a thermometer
Arduino programming is basically C++ with helpers so yeah you learn a lot!!
BASIC, Perl, Delphi… there are many languages you don’t want to start with.
I question the suggestion that Zig and Go are not “serious” programming languages. They certainly weren’t designed to be “easy” beginner languages.
I don’t think it matters a whole lot which language you start with. Learning to program is largely separate from learning a particular language, and if you do programming for a while, you’ll probably learn several. I do think someone who wants to understand programming deeply should learn each of:
- A lisp, probably Racket, but others will do. This teaches a lot about how computation works, and is at least a local maximum for abstractive power.
- C, an assembly language, or something similar where the developer must manage memory manually and has the ability to mismanage it. This teaches how computers work.
- A statically typed functional language, probably Haskell. This makes programming more math-like and probably represents a local maximum for what can be proven about a program’s behavior without solving the halting problem.
- SQL. I wish there was something prettier with a modicum of popularity that does what it does (PRQL is my favorite recent attempt), but there isn’t. This teaches thinking about data in sets and relations, and you will almost certainly use it in practice.
The creator of Go has an infamous quote on the language.
The key point here is our programmers are Googlers, they’re not researchers. They’re typically, fairly young, fresh out of school, probably learned Java, maybe learned C or C++, probably learned Python. They’re not capable of understanding a brilliant language but we want to use them to build good software. So, the language that we give them has to be easy for them to understand and easy to adopt. – Rob Pike
That’s one of the dumbest articles I‘ve ever read. Glad the author realized it themselves.
So Go was meant to be something similar to Java 4. A language where it is very difficult to shoot to your feet.
I really hate SQL it often feels like you have to work backwards instead of procedurally when you get anything complex going. Thank goodness I mostly work in pyspark.
Edit: Also thanks for the shout to prql looks cool might try it in a personal project or something
My entire career is mostly 90% SQL and CRUD. To each their own!
Same! The more I learn the more astounded I am. You mean I can retrieve 5m records in .01 seconds?
CRUD
When I was growing up the most advanced console to which I had access was the Genesis (or Master System, if you prefer). On it, by far the game I played the most was Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. (I liked Tobias Boon - sorry - Noob Saibot).
For that game, you could unlock debug mode by pressing b, a, down, left, a, down, c, right, up, down. BADLADCRUD. I don’t know what CRUD is in the context in which you were commenting, but it reminded me of this.
It stands for Create, Read, Update, Delete. Those are the primary operations on a database and a crud app refers to one which is little more than a front end to a database.
That sounds like a RESTful API.
Regardless, TIL. Thanks!
Why in your opinion do you think any person who wants to understand programming “deeply” (I’m not exactly sure what you mean with that) should learn lisp and haskell? It seems way way unnecessary.
And then you throw in SQL. Sure why not, but then why not javascript, Lua, c++, rust, PHP and a whole load of others who will teach you something unique most probably.
Not OP but I was a pretty competent C/C++/C# programmer first. Lisp and Haskell both totally changed how I thing about programming. I’ve used all the other languages you listed and I don’t think any of them have a unique philosophy to offer, except maybe rust for the memory model.
Lisp teaches you how flexible programming languages should be. Haskell teaches you about things like higher kinded types, and exposes you to loads of cool category theory stuff. Other languages can probably accomplish these goals, but I don’t think any of the alternatives you listed could.
Flexibility? Have you tried c++ 😁, check out template meta programming, and voilà rusts static memory management and compile time error checking in c++.
What I want to say is you don’t need this or that language to grasp functionality, and IMO heskel and lisp probably have more interesting and modern counterparts, if you feel the need.
Go is not serious? TIL.
There is benefit in learning any language.
I believe, I should’ve put this in quotation marks
Depending on what he means by “serious”. I don’t know what hat means in context of languages. So, depending on his personal definition what “serious” means, Go might not be serious at all.
The trouble with “easy” languages is that they allow you to write incorrect code without much pushback.
The trouble with “serious” languages is that they push back even when you’re writing correct code.
There’s plenty to learn from either route. Just pick something that piques your interest and dive in.
well summarised
Is this bait? Zig and Go are very much serious, especially Zig.
Generally python/Javascript is good for learning the basics. To know how types work learn c#/java/go. To learn how the memory works Zig/C are good. To learn about what a fully defined behavior means in a program you learn Rust. To learn what actually happens on the processor you learn assembly.
Honestly, if you’re hyped about Zig go for it, although I’d suggest “warming up” by doing a tic tac toe in python.
Anything is better than nothing.
Go and Zig are serious languages. Go is especially established and has a big ecosystem and capabilities. You could stick with Go forever if you don’t want to expand afterwards.
Starting ‘simpler’ is better because it gives you successes. It keeps you going.
It’s not so much easy-difficult, it’s high-level-low-level. Low-level languages can be easy in the sense that you don’t have many entities to juggle (stacks, registers, etc.) and high-level languages can be miserable, like C++.
Of you’re interested in starting with the fundamentals, go with C. If you just want to get something made, go withClaudePython.Zig or go are not that unserious of languages. Zig is arguably quite hard due to being pretty low-level. Maybe think about what domain you want to do programming in… Python might be a decent starting point tho (easy language, no memory management)
Where did you get the idea that Zig is an “easy” language?
no. You must start with malboge
Python is designed as an easy language. Yet it is a fundemental important language in the IT, backbone of many Linux operating systems and servers. One could even say… a serious language.
I personally wouldn’t care if a language is called “easy” or not. You should also look at what it is capable at its peak and where it is used most often, if it works for you. Pick the language that you think fits you the best. I wouldn’t call Zig as an easy language to get into, its still low level language.
backbone of many Linux operating systems and servers
???
'Scuse me, hwat?
Try uninstalling Python from Ubuntu and see what happens. (Do NOT actually try this.)
I need to test this with multiple distributions in a virtual machine, out of curiosity. Then test executing common tasks. Could be an idea for a blog post or YouTube video…
Firstly, Zig and Go are serious. Anybody who told you different isn’t a good person to learn from.
My journey was:
- Basic (various dialects)
- 6502 assembly
- Forth
- 68000 assembly
- Pascal
- C
- Perl
- C++
- Python
- x86 assembly
- Java
- Haskell
- RISC-V assembly
- Zig
With some others thrown in I’m sure and some hardware description languages. The stuff I learnt in Basic 45 years ago is still relevant today. I learnt something from all of them. It doesn’t really matter where you start, but you have to take a first step and you need to write code to learn, even if it’s just copying it. It has to go through your fingers.
I remember people telling Zig was a “vibecoder” language, in the context of rewriting Bun to Rust. Yeah I know, a very odd kind of logic
Zigs goal is to be more pragmatic than C.
It is quite possibly the worst language to vibecode in, it is updating fast so LLMs usually don’t know what format to use (meaning a person who knows zig must fix those format errors). You can also get an LLM to write terrible rust code and while it will perform shit it will probably work, Zig on the other hand has manual memory management and everything has to be thought about or else it won’t work. This is why once Anthropic bought bun they decided to vibe remove zig.
As the previous comment said the lead developer for zig really, Really, doesnt like AI and much of the community is also using zig because of its human focus. (Such as me)
The great benifit of Zig over C in my opinion, is it is more human readible, especially in terms of what is happening with memory management. Zig aims to have no hidden actions making it just as low level than C while making more sense and hiding less.
Yes 99% of programming is the higher level thought process behind making a program, and that skill transfers between programming languages. The specific syntax doesn’t matter that much.
crazy to call zig, a low level systems language, an “easy” language
Zig and Go are serious. I think Python would be a language that isn’t serious (despite it’s widespread use in serious applications) but has a reputation for being easy. I don’t know if that reputation is really deserved.
Anyway I would start with one of Python, Go or Typescript (via Deno). I would avoid Rust, Haskell, OCaml, C++ as your very first language, but they could be your second.
Whatever you do don’t learn Python and stop there. That’s the way to be a crap programmer. And if you do use Python learn to use type hints early on.
1 agree with everything you wrote besides the Deno?
why Deno?
Kind of irrelevant wrt op but, as domeone who avoids js at all costs, i find deno to be essential as it offers a smorgasbord of code formatters ootb.
Typescript projects are a significant effort to set up with the traditional tooling (NPM & Node). With Deno you can literally just create a
.tsfile and run it.do you think it better than bun? (the anthropic acquisition and rust rewrite aside)
I haven’t ever used Bun tbh.
I feel like Python is sometimes too powerful in terms of what you can achieve with few lines of code. It tends to have lines that do a lot of things at once and therefore become very hard to understand despite not having a lot of code at the surface.
In my opinion it is very good for stuff like data analysis and scripting test setups, but (with my admittedly limited experience in the area) I dislike using it for larger applications. Because it is a scripting language and not compiled, I have run into errors that a compiled language would have detected before even starting. Meanwhile python was happy to run my program until it unfortunately branched into the defective path…
If you want to build stuff quickly it is incredibly what you can achieve with it though.
Because it is a scripting language and not compiled, I have run into errors that a compiled language would have detected before even starting.
Use type hints. Pyright in strict mode. (Don’t use mypy, it’s much worse.)
I agree though, it is poorly suited to larger applications. Mainly because of its glacial speed.
