Which computer programming language should I learn?

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I am a high schooler looking to learn how to code, and can not decide whether I want to learn Ruby, Python or Java. If it helps to know what I am using it for, I want to eventually learn how to create basic websites. Also, where do I start when learning how to code? Do you know any good resources?

If you just want to learn how to do basic websites then you should learn HTML, CSS, javascript (this is different from Java), bootstrap, maybe a little JQuery, which is a pre-written Javascript library you can pull from to enhance you site (fancy buttons, pop-up windows, etc). The languages you mentioned are for more complex operations and not really needed by front end developers.

If you ever did want to get into more complicated websites where maybe you connect to a database or do some behind the scenes computations you might want to learn PHP and SQL, but in a professional environment there would probably be somebody else who specifically does that work.

There's a bunch of good online sources to learn these skills, usually for free. codecademy, w3schools ,codeschool are a few. Just google and look around, it's pretty straight forward stuff.

Don't learn any of those. Just learn C, not C++

Watch this if you don't believe me.
https://youtu.be/QM1iUe6IofM
If you can master pointers (and you should try very hard to before giving up).
You wil then become very highly valued and can get good work.

C to create a website? Are you serious? Just because you found a video from some guy that doesn't like OOP? I could show you a video from someone that doesn't like procedural\functional coding, would that change your mind back? You could still use a higher-level OOP language but write your code in a largely procedural\functional way if that was your main issue.

The most useful area to study, should you be interested in information and its future, is xml, and the xml stylesheet and query languages, xslt and xquery. Get clear on that, and then stack HTML, CSS and JavaScript on top. You can generate any of the last set from xquery. Check http://exist-db.org for free and powerful tools

If you're focused on making websites, start with HTML/CSS (they're markup and styling languages, not programming languages, but they're a necessity for web work). After you have a firm understanding of HTML/CSS you'll be able to make a static website from scratch. That's when it's time to pick up JavaScript, the actual 'programming' of the web. At that point I would highly recommend also learning Angular, it's overall the best framework for creating single page applications (yes, that's a personal opinion, but it's also backed up by data-- Angular is exploding in popularity right now), and if you decide to move to C/C++ Angular mimics class based languages (JavaScript itself is function based) so you won't have to learn as much new material.

To be honest XML is now considered old hat. It's still used for back-end things where maintaining data types or validating the data format is required, but xml support in javascript is poor, and JSON is now the data representation format that people use (it fits better with javascript's lack of strong typing also), even some databases are using it as a format to store data.

For generating html, xml and xslt are much harder to use than more dedicated web-based templating frameworks like PHP, asp.net etc, and xhtml has dropped out of favour also.

If i learned to code today, i'd skip C++ and Java junk and go directly for Python. It's a capable language, multi platform (with some limitations on Windows), easy to learn, easy to install/deploy in a large environment and it is sought after knowledge that can easily land you a job.

.Net and Java had their glory days, but there are plenty of other languages that starts popping up, like Ruby on rails, Scala, rust etc, each with it's specific focus.

Web monkeys - not so much sought after these days.

Whatever you choose, go with that what can put food on your table, just try to ignore the MS/Oracle dinosaurs.

Pretty ignorant, but it is the internet I guess.

I would say that language does not matter as much as learning to program and learning to learn how different languages work. Languages which are popular today might be going out the window tomorrow and new languages will take their place as technology changes at a fast pace. Don't attach yourself to any one language and you will do a lot better.

You're right, ignorance is omnipresent on some forums with people trying to beat a dead C++ horse with a Java stick.

Hello,


May I suggest Python?

I am just starting, but so far, it seems a good way to go!

Agree, Python is a good language for analytics and some system stuff under Windows and Linux, quite handy if you want to work in those areas. After tinkering with Python, i have no interest in learning Powershell, just wish Python had WMI support by default.

Its not for high performance applications though, so i wouldn't write any games in it.