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!

Go is not serious? TIL.

There is benefit in learning any language.

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.

(defmacro if (test then else)
  `(cond ~test ~then true ~else))

Go is great to learn on. Go for it. And it’s super useful for web dev.

Leant how to solve problems with if, else if, else and for and while, and you can do a ton of stuff. Learn how to work with objects and APIs and you’ve got the basics for any language. You will always need to learn syntax, convention, and secure practices, but the fundamentals don’t change.

Doing anything with your brain will always increase it’s aptitude in that “topic”.

People that learn lots of human languages become better and better at learnig further human languages.

People that do one type of math get better at learning other types of math.

People that do something with their body coordination (athletes) can pick up other types of body coordination (other sports or dance for example.) faster compared to couch potatoes.

etc.

So doing anything with your brain is already useful, even as just a “workout”.

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.

It us totally OK to start easy.

Scheme (for example Guile) or Racket are great beginner languages, because they have a very minimal core, and at the same time a lot of power. Created by teachers, they also have great guides.

Clojure is also a fantastic Lisp language, extremely elegant and very powerful. Its user community has many experienced programmers, and it is very friendly.

Python is probably the most popular choice for beginners. It has a nice tutorial and countless libraries, which allows to put programs together from components. But its build and packaging system is notoriously messy (though it seems improving) and can get in the way when doing more complex stuff later. Its user forums also suffer currently most from AI slop.

I wouldn’t recommend Go language for beginners. It is relatively simple, true, but although it is well-geared to its main target - web applications - it has serious pitfalls with concurrency, which can lead to arcane bugs and a lot of hair-pulling.

You could also start with Rust. The language is larger than others, that’s true. But you do not need to learn it all at once. Also, it has best-in-class online tutorials, books and documentation. Its compiler error messages are extremely helpful. And its build and packaging system are so much easier to use than almost anything else. This matters for beginners, too, since this allows you to put together interesting programs quickly.

Why is Go not a serious language? Programming backend stuff is great with it. Especially networking. Reading Go is not hard and in my opinion it is more easy to understand Go code you find from other programmers than Python. Companies are build on Go and people make a living from it. However you need to look into you local job market, where I live there are very few companies looking for Go developers. It is a serious language. But I don’t know much about zig, I used it once for CGO.

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 don't think your plan to get more serious is pointed at the right end or means.

You don't point criticism at programming languages necessarily. Because, later you'll want to find an ecosystem best suited to achieve a specific task.

If a later task becomes a serious consideration, then you'll seriously consider the best placed language to complete that task. Consequent language quibbles might be path of the course.

For example, working on Android is only going to be effective through a handful of languages such as Java, Kotlin, C#, JavaScript, …

Breaking new ground with another language pointed at Android would be like climbing Mt Everest without all the usual equipment. Sure it's a challenge, but is it the challenge you want?

Learn any language that helps you learn, but that's only as a means to that (learning) end.

Lmao. First, everyone is right. Go is serious. An Zig as well. And a bit niche.

Furthermore: Yes. Unless you like learning curves as steep as a brick wall… You should probably start with something beginner friendly.

And you should get some kind of book to learn it. That’s easier and faster than poking around and learning things in random order.

As an adult, just skip the programming languages made for children. And skip the crazy ones like PHP. Go for something that is both useful and doesn’t come with 5 bazillion things to learn at once, and as many exceptions to those rules.

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 with Claude Python.

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.

Any use? Always! Exercising your brain will never be a bad investment!

But which language really depends on why you want to learn and what you want to do with it, though! Coming at it from a ‘languages with an abundance of learning resources’ perspective (sorry not exhaustive):

• You want to program devices; LEDs, microcontrollers, sensors, etc? Python!

• You want to make a pretty website? JavaScript with the React framework!

• You want to prototype out a monolithicly big web app quickly? Ruby on Rails!

• You want to make infographics? R!

• You want to start a career in Software Engineering? JavaScript with Node, Go, Rust, or C# with dot-net framework, and many more*. Also, abort, don’t do this, AI is decimating the job seeking field right now.

So, it really depends on what YOU want to do with it. As others have hinted, a programming language is often just ‘syntactic sugar’ to accomplish the same programming concepts. Most all the modern languages can do the same things, just using different function-names/words/syntax. So as a learner, just frankly ignore all the “{X} is best at {Y}” arguments, including those above, and instead: concentrate on the concepts (like loops, recursion, associations, type control, etc, etc, etc.) over the specific language, first. Good luck OP!

I try to only write in easy language if I can. My favorite one is Lean4.

There’s lots of this vs that discussion in this thread. IMO the most useful such distinction I’ve encountered is languages that encourage you to think about data vs languages that encourage you to think about transformations (of data). Excel and modern OOP are the former while haskell and digital signal processing are the latter.

When I first started programming I was constantly thinking the same thing: should I learn this or that language? Will it be useful or a waste of time?, etc but it really doesn’t matter. Nearly every modern language has the same core principles of variables, constants, functions and data structures. Once you’ve gotten the hang of those ideas then switching languages is just a matter of learning the new syntax which isn’t hard when you already know how it’s going to work

Personally I’m in a similar situation with Nim-lang. I like the style and performance, it hits a spot for me that other languages do not*. I wouldn’t call it “easy” though, as you still have to think about typing and other structure stuff (but not to the degree that you’d have to deal with for other languages). Being less popular of a language is probably the main issue here (there are many options for bindings, but you may find yourself waiting on something specific with smaller communities).

TBH I haven’t used it as much as I should, having other issues. The last thing I did though (sweeper clone), I finished it and it made me feel better about my possibility of understanding complexities.

* I guess newer changes to Python and LUA might make a difference, though I still get the feeling those are not just-enable-to-be-reasonably-fast options.

so one thing about programming languages is at the end of the day, they can all generally accomplish the same things. they are all turing complete and generally capable of expressing programs that any of the others can.

as others in this thread have said, many patterns you learn within one programming language will transfer to others. some personal context, i attended and then taught at a coding bootcamp for a year about a decade ago, saw over 300 students and have been doing software engineering since. it was full time and the students would learn ruby basics over 4 weeks and then would be able to do the same things in javascript in a few days. that said, those languages are pretty similar but i hope it makes the point.

so my main suggestion is to start with a general purpose, syntactically simple language. the less syntax and overhead in the language, the more you will be able to focus on the fundamentals of programming and less on jumping through the hoops of the language you’re working with. stay away from typed languages for at least the first few months unless you really really only want to do low level stuff.

some languages i think you should consider: ruby, python, javascript. they are relatively similar for a beginner. python has more usage in data heavy scenarios due to it’s extensive data libraries. ruby’s whole mantra is being a joy to write. javascript is simple but that also means you don’t get much help from it out of the box. consider it as a first/second language mainly if you are interested in websites.

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)

Python is one of the most-widely used languages in the world.

Modern OOP is an antipattern.

I don’t like complex languages. Why do i have to remember <keyword> x100 for thing that a proper design from start would have accomplished? Some of the larger ones even have different keywords for basically the same task duplicated.

By that note, D seems decent.

Go is as serious as it gets. Go is also pretty simple and gives you great foundation and understanding.

Either go with Go (!) or with a lisp like racket, following the book htdp.org These are different approaches but will give you a huge headstart and better understanding of how to actually design a system instead of getting lost in code. I personally recommend the second approach to people who ask me.

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.

If you are learning because you are just interested in this, then I might say go with any language like C/Go where you have real datatypes you can work with.

C might be a good place to start for a little while where you can learn the fundamentals like data types, logic, etc.

Once armed with the fundamentals, you can really just go wherever you desire, look at and maybe try a few to see what you like.

Nothing is easy when learning programming from scratch and by yourself ; just choose whatever you feel is cool (at beginner level, it does not make a big difference).

Avoid the compilation process by using interpreted language

Go seems like a good option to begin with; you can do a lot with it, and it’s not that complicated but does expose you to concepts like pointers.

There are plenty of very “serious” systems written in Go (e.g. Kubernetes), it’s not a toy language.

Go is easy??

Logic is common to all programming languages. Everything else is syntax and knowing what functions or utilities you can capitalize on. No matter how complex things seem under the hood it’s only one instruction at a time that is being processed. Speed and memory make it seem like multitasking. It’s as simple as “If this, then that”. Once you get the foundations of logic down, you’re good to go. Everything else is experience and time takes care of that. Good luck and have fun. As far as confidence goes my mantra throughout life, especially when faced with complex situations is a derisive “How hard can this be?”, while plodding forward.

Any language is good to start with. When you learn a language pick one that makes sense to you. The main thing you are learning is not the language it’s how to change how you think about problems. From there the differences between languages are technical and any language can be conquered in time except JavaScript because fuck JavaScript.

It takes a long time to learn how to code (5-10 years I would say), and learning multiple languages will only make you a better programmer. Besides, you’re just starting out and have no idea how far you’re going to get… I personally failed the first few times I tried and didn’t really catch on until I was in university. Start with something easy, maybe learn something useful, then try a harder one. Starting with a harder language just increases the probability that you find it too hard and give up. And plenty of people start with easy languages and still fail anyway, so don’t take success for granted, even with an “easy” language.

In any case, code is just a tool to get a job done, so I would say start with finding a job that you want to do and then learn the coding you need to accomplish it. I personally learned how to code by using Python instead of a calculator for my science and engineering assignments in university. Besides that, it’s a great language for general purpose tasks on Linux/UNIX systems - you can use it for file sharing, task automation, writing chatbots, etc.

Writing games is another good source of motivation - you could use Pygame in Python, which has lots of tutorials that you could play around with. There’s also Godot too - you could just start by following the tutorial and playing around with some of the scripts to see what they do.

no. You must start with malboge

I learned with python and switched to rust when that started to piss me off. It’ll be awhile until you know enough about why you want a different language for a task. Until then, python and JavaScript are totally fine; you may never even need to leave those ecosystems depending on what you want to do.

Zig or Go are serious programming languages. Zig is actually the language I would least recommend for complete beginners because in my opinion it is one the most serious languages currently. What lead you to your examples Zig and Go and how do you determine what a ‘serious’ programming language is?

crazy to call zig, a low level systems language, an “easy” language

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.

Programming is a tool. Systems understanding is what has value. Pick a system you want to learn and actively build and fail consistently.

Repeated exposure to reality is the way to learn fast and gain confidence.

I get paid a whole lot to work solely in Deluge. which is the most painfully simple language ever. you want a join() built in? fuck you. sleep()? not allowed. you want a “for i in range()”? nope, they don’t do that here.

simple languages are often the most used in production unless you’re doing something highly specific that warrants a specific language.