Best programming language to learn for a noob?

So I was browsing all the cool black hat applications and it raised my interest in learning how to program my own automating software, what would be the best yet fairly easy language to learn for someone who barely guesses his was through html, javascript and php? I tried visual basic back in the "yahoo id cracking" days and only coded really simple stuff based on others source codes, I heard java and python are pretty simple to start with and C/++ is okay but VBScript is the best for automating...whats your thoughts?

It all depends on your needs.
I would say to go with Visual Basic since you can find a lot of free apps with source code at . Having a lot of examples will speed up the learning process.

html.. is the best i think.. w3shcools dot c0m will help you a ton and its all free.. but def does depend on your needs.. start out basic and graduate to more advanced..

I'd second VB. It's the easiest to learn. Though I myself prefer perl for automation.

I would definitely go with php, that along with the cURL library will help a great deal

Go with Java or C#. Both of the languages are easy to learn and both have lots of resources on the web. Also with C# you can download one of the best development environments, VS.NET for free.

All programming languages can do anything you want, neither are "better" than the other.

Albeit, some are easier to do certain tasks in.

If you're interfacing hardware, stay away from VB and java, stick to C/C++, otherwise i'd say VB can do everything you need. Only problem is it won't work on linux/mac etc. so if you wish to sell programs, you're screwed.

If thats the case, hire someone to do it for you in C.

I would recommend python or C#.

Seems python is easier to learn for me.

Chris

Just curious, are there any more perl programmers here?

captainbrian said:

html.. is the best i think.. w3shcools dot c0m will help you a ton and its all free.. but def does depend on your needs.. start out basic and graduate to more advanced..

Click to expand...

HTML isn't a programming language. It's used in conjunction with programming languages. How can you even automate anything with HTML

chris you are right.. i was just saying to learn html to get the basic understanding of programming, then go in to learning php and java... but i learned html first and now im learning php n java.. i found with a html base.. learning the other langauges is easier..

What are you trying to do that you can't do with the languages you've already dabbled in?

If it's something specific, ask about that. If you're just learning to program in order to learn to program, you'll probably burn out before you get anywhere useful.

Have a project in mind then tackle it with whatever tool you're already most comfortable with. This will keep you motivated during the learning curve.

Once you've done it one one language, try tackling it again in a new language so that you can start with a base of familiarity which will highlight the differences between languages much better for you as you progress.

I'm not an expert coder but I've created projects in cp/m, fortran, basic (oldschool!), pascal, visual basic, c, c++, java, python, perl, javascript, c#(.net), php and Ruby so far, with more to come. The only way I managed to keep from gouging out my own eyeballs with frustration was tackling specific problems with each new language. Now that I'm getting more heavily involved in web programming the background with each of these tools is helping me to make decisions in a way I couldn't if I hadn't tinkered with all of them.

So my advice is: fix a problem that you currently have in any language you want. Rinse repeat.

Most people would recommend visual basic. Basic (not visual) is so easy, a 12 year old can learn it. I did it on a lousy hc 2000 computer

Visual Basic is very easy, and anyone can learn it. I got started with it over 8 years ago...