Replying to Should I Follow?

I would reccomend a language like Java...rather easy to learn in and not overly complicated for basic programming tasks. You would do well to stay away from Visual Basic. It does too much for you so you learn less.

To start, is very good to learn a general purpose language, like C/C++, or Java. It´s very true that many factors may distract your objetive, but there is more than one language for some purposes. You can not use JavaSCRIPT to program out of the internet (ok, ok you can, but why if there is many other like C!).

Also it depends what area you are programming in.

Assembly is Great for programming device drivers and hardware firmware, but useless for web design.

Perl is great for web design, but is useless for programming codecs.

and prolog is useless for maths, but perfect for Artificual intelligence.

I would say a good starting point would be C++ or Java. its a general purpose language that you can do almost everything with. (except wire kernel code with java).

it's impossibile to predict the evolution of programming languages because everyday many programmers create a new sequence of code or a new kernel_module and then...i think all these "Sources" are an evolution because you may be the first who write it, the first who creates a link between two peripherals with a new ASM programms...not only the popular script and the popular programms help the evolution of a language..
And then you have to study many languages and not only one, so...you can decide to programm with a different language if you need some specific features or performance...ex...Don't try to program a web Spider in Java
'njoy

There are so many useful languages available right now, it really doesn't matter which language you pick. Almost all of them have the capability to do many similar things, so just choose one to get started. Once you learn one language, switching to another becomes much easier. Plus, the more languages you know, the better. Since your dad probably has lots of reference books for Perl, if he is recommending knowing it, that would probably be a good place for you to start.

Well, programming languages are always evolving so it is difficult to say which direction you should go. If you are proficient with a language, you'll be able to program almost anything you need. It is true that some newer languages can speed up some tasks but really it is user preference. I have a friend that still programs all of his work in Fortran and Cobalt.

Additionally, you'll want to consider what type of programming you'll be doing. Some languages are better suited to certain applications. For example PHP was specifically created for internet programing.

Finally, all of the languages have overlaps and similarities. The for statement for perl, php, C, Java is still pretty much the same as it was in BASIC 20 years ago. So learning any programming language is beneficial in that it will make learning additional languages easier. So pick your language now, it will only help later.

Good luck and happy programming,
vujsa

okay my father is a computer programmer for a large company and recently he said that we soon will all need to know how to 'speak' if that the word to use, perl now i understand that programming is a big thing but if i decide to learn programming and such what would be a good program to start with. He had me on perl and it seemed pretty easy I just wanted some feed back from others on what they thought on all this.
Thanks, Anne