Learning Computer Languages

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Querneus
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Re: Learning Computer Languages

Postby Querneus » Thu Jun 21, 2018 8:02 pm

Xenops wrote:I think it's time I start learning how to use computer languages. My two main interests are these:

1. Editing a website (maybe use Wordpress as a base?). I would like to have my own website for my creative pursuits.
2. Data programming for biology research: I'm thinking Python and/or R

WordPress is primarily meant for people who don't know how to program or administrate a website (much) but who have to create and maintain the content of one. Let us not forget its original focus was bloggers. You can make very fancy stuff programming plugins in PHP for WordPress, but if you know Python you might as well make your website in HTML + Python and avoid both learning PHP (not the best of languages) and the WordPress environment altogether.

Python is a good choice to start all around. There's plenty of resources for it, and it has both a clean look and helpful error messages when things go wrong. It gets some criticism as a starting language because of its non-explicit "typing" (in other languages you have to declare whether a variable is a number, or a string of letters, or whatever, but in Python you keep in your head what something is), but I think that's minor. A good textbook or teacher should guide you about that dynamic typing stuff.
I'm familiar with the basics of HTML, but not much beyond making a text bold or whatnot.

I was wondering if there is an order that I should approach things?

Thanks in advance. :)

Become familiar with HTML and CSS. Then you can learn some Javascript. Javascript, while not strictly necessary, is useful for anything that's not text and colors: animations, loading new things from your server without pressing a button/a link/F5 (e.g. pages with infinite scrolling, so to avoid the quick white flash seen when loading a new page), fancy-looking scrolling, etc. Many people's opinion these days is that Javascript is practically a must and you should use Javascript frameworks like AngularJS or React, but I think that stuff is overkill a lot of the time.

You can start learning Python at any time. It's not a problem if you do it as you learn HTML and CSS, because for a while your Python programs will be just for the console, so they'll look like this anyway.

I'd suggest learning the SQL dialect of your database(s) of choice some time after beginning to learn Python. Knowing SQL is very important no matter what you learn.

If you're into biological research, R is good to know too because of how common it is in that field. So is Scala. I'm not familiar with what the Python environment for scientists is like though (i.e. the use of SciPy, Pandas, etc.).
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