What is the easiest programming language to use?

[Nexus]

I would say torque is a very easy language to learn.  Annoying things like scope, reserved words, and variable types either do not apply or are far simpler than in most other languages

[Ad Bot]

[ultimamax]

Calculator BASIC. Buy a TI-86 and learn learn how to program with that, just like, richard around with it in classes.

You certainly won't write anything useful, but you'll learn the basics of programming, like, logic and if statements and syntax and stuff.

If you already understand that sort of thing, then like, learn Python or Ruby or something.

True dat. This was my first language and it was easy as forget once you play with it.

[Travis [bob36455]]

C++ is what I used.


I find trying to map in Source SDK easier though.

[Melting Plastic]

I started with BlitzMax. Easy language, gives you access to simple commands like DrawImage(), and is very fun to make games with.

[Ipquarx]

In my programming class we used a learning version of Racket, a language that while never use for practical development, is okay for learning the basics.

Though personally, I started with torquescript. It's loosely typed, has automatic type shuffling, no real arrays, things that can be ultra annoying for a pro, but is great for a beginner. After that I learned C#, which uses very similar syntax, except has all the stuff of a professional language. And now I'm moving onto C++.

[lcyGamma]

Game maker? Doesn't need scripting?

I would suggest gamemaker but I'm actually sure that does require scripting of some sort. And costs money IIRC.

You are right it does require it, for anything decent at least.

[mr. pedophile]

Is there any way to learn programming that doesn't go straight from 1+1=2 to determining the mass of a black hole

[Elecro]

Lua is what I started out with. Its pretty basic.

[xxxxkill]

Lua and BASIC appear to be the basic things, from what I've seen. Might wanna start with one of those. Probably BASIC because apparently that's the entire point of it.

[Sirrus]

True dat. This was my first language and it was easy as forget once you play with it.

ya and just a heads up I said TI-86 because it has these great menus underneath where you can choose functions to write into the code while still looking at the code, whereas with the other TI graphing calculators you need to go to an entirely different screen for the functions.

[ultimamax]

ya and just a heads up I said TI-86 because it has these great menus underneath where you can choose functions to write into the code while still looking at the code, whereas with the other TI graphing calculators you need to go to an entirely different screen for the functions.

Yeah that's probably the worst part about TI Basic.

[Sirrus]

Yeah that's probably the worst part about TI Basic.

Ya, TI-86 is rad. I couldn't find a picture of a programming screen, but here's it with the menu up:



When you're programming, you've got the code on the main screen and then that menu is a two-tiered menu with all the commands on it. It's superfantastic.

[Trinick!]

If you're going to learn a language learn one that isn't useless.

LUA does a lot of stuff really awkwardly, it's partially functional and adopts some things from the functional programming side of programming languages, like ~= for not equals instead of !=. I don't personally like it, but it's a very powerful language and LOVE is a very powerful game engine for beginners to use, Centhra just used it for our latest Ludum Dare entry and while there was a bit of googling for things we didn't know, we still finished.

Python has the worst syntax ever, in my opinion. It looks so gross. It for some reason uses a handicapped amount of English words shamelessly and does away with proper formatting that makes the code easy to read. Aside from that, it's a fantastic language with tons of libraries to help people and lots of support from the programming community. I just can't get past the syntax.

Ruby is my favorite scripting language. It's very versatile with parsing, you can code in it any way you want (like a Python programmer or like a C programmer) but that's not to say it's the same thing as either. It doesn't have nearly as many libraries as Python, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have enough libraries. It's a fantastic language.

BASIC on the other hand is useless.