What Programming Language Should I Learn?

A friend, who is a TA, messaged me asking about whether it was okay that one of her students was considering a JavaScript course on CodeAcademy. She felt that concerned that JavaScript was a bad language to learn.

I’m happy to have a long argument about why and how bad JavaScript is. There are certainly worse languages. I’m looking at you PHP. There are languages that are probably better, but I don’t think it matters.

If you have the kind of mindset that makes it easy to pick up a programming language, picking up the next programming language will be easier. Every subsequent language is easier because most of the “stuff” that a language is made of is stuff you already know how to use. Once you use a lambda in one language, it’s not a big effort to learn the slightly different syntax in another language.

The “right” language to learn early is one that’s pretty conventional. JavaScript has all kinds of deficiencies, but the concepts and syntax are like a lot of other languages, so you’re primed to pick up the next one.

I started of in BASIC and I turned out okay. Your first language won’t scar you for life.