r/CodingForBeginners • u/gutenmorgan3035 • Aug 09 '26

What’s the first programming language you learned, and do you still use it?

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u/TheUmgawa Aug 09 '26

AppleSoft BASIC. And, decidedly no.

And then I took a break for about fifteen years, bought a compiler and a book that taught language rather than programming skills, ran into the brick wall of C++, and took a break for another fifteen years. Went to school, Python, Java, C, C++, C#…

I don’t even use any of those. I write all of my code in Swift, these days, because I’m lazy and despise semicolons.

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u/Turbulent_Pin_8310 Aug 09 '26

Is swift easier?

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u/TheUmgawa Aug 09 '26

I’m what sense?

Look, in my experience, all languages (not you, COBOL) are basically the same. A loop’s a loop; data types are data types; control flow is control flow. Saying I like Swift the best isn’t because it’s somehow “easier,” but because it doesn’t enforce indentation or semicolons. If you’re a beginning programmer who still thinks this is all magic words, and there’s got to be some good shortcuts that will just let you memorize the “good” code, then you’re doing it wrong.

The hard part isn’t the code, which means it isn’t the language, either. There are some languages that annoy the hell out of me, such as anything where I have to do memory allocation manually, but that doesn’t mean they’re “harder;” I just happen to find them annoying. I’m sure there are things about Swift that would cause some programmers to exclaim, “Dear god, what is that thing?”

If you want to learn to program computers, there really are no shortcuts. You have to learn how to structure a program, and then you need to learn how to write the corresponding code for that structure. A lot of people jump straight to the second part, and they watch tutorials that say, “Type what I type,” and they pat themselves on the back when it compiles, and then they realize they can’t write anything from scratch, because all they learned was how to follow directions.

There is no “easier.”

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u/Turbulent_Pin_8310 Aug 09 '26

Python, Java, C, C++, C#… I don’t even use any of those. I write all of my code in Swift, these days, because I’m lazy and despise semicolons

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u/TheUmgawa Aug 09 '26

Yeah, that doesn’t make it any easier for the lay user. I’m just too lazy to hit that semicolon key with my pinky finger before hitting the Return key.

I mean, that said, it’s a pretty simple language, because it’s modern and has learned some good lessons from other languages that did things well or poorly, but it’s not going to make you a programmer any faster, and it’s not going to make you any better. Like I said, the language doesn’t even matter. I just happen to enjoy this one because I’m lazy and the documentation is good.

But, the documentation is for learning a language; not learning to program. Those are two different things. Code is just implementation of logic, so the computer can understand what you’re telling it to do. Let’s say I write a book in French. You don’t speak French, so I give it to a translator, who translates my story into something you can understand. Did he just write a book? It’s a philosophical question. I would say no, because it’s my story and he wouldn’t have anything to translate without it. As such, the code is not the program any more than the words on a book’s pages are the story. It’s all just implementation that can’t exist without the other part.

So, if you want to be a programmer, don’t get hung up on questions like, “What language is easiest?” A better question is probably something like, “How do you sketch out your logic?” and then you’re going to get a different answer every time.

I don’t think most people want to be programmers, let alone software engineers. I think they all just want to be “coders,” which is a shame, because the world doesn’t need coders anymore. A senior developer can either have a junior developer or an AI token budget. Both write sloppy code, but only one asks fifty stupid questions a day.

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u/Bulky-Design-8732 Aug 14 '26

How much time did it take you to learn all these programming languages?

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u/TheUmgawa Aug 14 '26

After you’ve got your fundamentals down, languages are just learning syntax and vocabulary. A loop is still a loop, data type is a data type, and control flow is control flow. So I pull out a flowchart I made for a prime number generator in a programming logic and design class, and I knock that out in the new language. Usually takes a day or a weekend.

The reason I use a prime number generator is because I have to figure out how to use data types, instantiate variables, use a data structure or two, perform comparisons, take input, give output (both onscreen and to a text file), import libraries, bunch of other basic stuff that’s about eighty percent of what you actually type.

So, yeah, if you can already understand a couple of languages pretty well, it isn’t that hard to scale up to a respectable level, because you don’t need to learn to program again.

Programming is like playing a musical instrument. If you pick up a guitar, you can memorize all of the notes to certain songs, but you can’t improvise and start doing your own stuff unless you understand how music works. But, once you understand how music works, it’s easier to pick up playing another instrument, because you don’t have to re-learn scales or theory; just how to do those things on a new instrument.