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?

  • portifornia@piefed.socialEnglish
    81·
    6 days ago

    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!