[lug] First Programming Language

[Jed S. Baer]

> My daughter wants to learn her first programming language.
> She's a business major in college, and as part of an independent
> study class, she can choose which language.
> The demo task is three layers ...
> 
>     1. A front end, probably just HTML/CSS
>     2. A web server -- not her problem.
>     3. A back end, to query a simple DB and return an answer.
>       This is where she would learn her programming language.
> 
> One of her friends is recommending learning Javascript, but I
> think Python3 would be a much better choice.  It's more general
> purpose, and more likely to be useful in her future.

I suppose I'm biased, since I started out writing COBOL on an IBM 360,
but the notion of doing a web-output database application as the place to
start learning a language seems misguided. Too many things to try to keep
track of at once. Even simple things such as debugging will be more
complicated (as in, where does stderr go? or whatever the equivalent is
the OS she'll be working in).

And, the other question would be what does she think her future will be?
Business major? Okay ... how will she be using programming knowledge
going forward?

I'm probably too far removed from the IT world now to know what would
most useful, but for starters, I'd be looking at projects that can run
standalone without needing a web server or a database.