[LUGSB] What do you think would be a good "first programming language", and why?

[Sean Callanan]

Anwar,

What do you want from a programming language? Do you want, for instance,

A beautiful language that lets you think about problems and express 
solutions in elegant ways? Lisp and Objective Caml are excellent 
examples of these. I can recommend both.
- A good book on Lisp is Guy L. Steele's Common Lisp: The Language 
(http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/Groups/AI/html/cltl/cltl2.html).
- A good book on Objective Caml is (http://caml.inria.fr/oreilly-book/).
 
A widely-used language that will give you a good idea of how people in 
industry program? C++ and Java are excellent languages here.
- There are plenty of books out there about these languages, many 
(especially those covering Java) at the beginning level.

A low-level language that will teach you about the nitty-gritty of 
computers? You simply can't go wrong with C. Once you're really good 
with C, you can also start thinking about assembly.
- There are many books about C but "The C Programming Language" by Brian 
Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie is considered a classic.

A useful language that will allow you to automate many simple things in 
UNIX environments? Python, Perl, and Tcl are all good languages here. 
Perl sees widest use, but both Python and Tcl make up for that in elegance.
- Perl is a bear to learn, but O'Reilly (http://perl.oreilly.com/) do 
their level best to make it easy.
- I know very little about Python and Tcl, you will have to ask others 
on the list for references.

Sincerely,
Sean Callanan