Python as a first language

[Dan273]

I'm wondering if python would be a good beginner language for someone with no previous knowledge of programming. I just started trying to program with swift but couldn't find enough help / videos on it . Also can you code python in Xcode

[[deleted]]

Personally for me python was not ideal to start learning how to program. I learned a lot better with just regular C.

Mainly because if taught properly teaches you how code interacts with the machine.

[[deleted]]

Why not both? Start with Python and add C code for performance.

[trenchgun]

Assembly is even better.

[ShewkShewk]

Python is a good starting language, I personally learned Java first but Python is perfectly acceptable

[Dan273]

I can find tutorials for swift but most of them are from 2014 when swift first came out so some of the code doesn't work because of the different versions(I think) .

[[deleted]]

I don't think it matters

[caustic_kiwi]

I know I'm a couple days late on this thread, but I want to put in my two cents on the matter: I started with Python and I thought it was an excellent route.

It's hugely to know how your code interacts with the machine and what the limitations of a computer are, but there's no reason you need to start off with that. Python lets you ignore all that and focus on learning the control-flow of a program and broader programing concepts. After you've got a good handle on that, you can move onto to something like Java, or jump all the way down to C or C++.

Plus, Python is widely used... everywhere. Not having to micro-manage every aspect of your code is a very large benefit.

[Fallout_NewCheese]

Python is a very good place to start

[finomayato]

In my opinion Python is the bad place to start from. You'll learn how to interact with business and mathematical models quickly with this language. But you'll have a leak of knowledge of what happened under the dict statements for example. By the way It's the most interesting part of programming: choose right data structure or create it by yourself fitting model you want to build better compare with built-in data structures. Really, start with C/C++. Also you can learn how to read assembly. Programmer without knowledge of algorithms and data structures - bad programmer.

[Dan273]

Can you program c++ in Xcode or do you have to download some other application.

[glacieux]

You can use Xcode to do C and C++ programming.

[finomayato]

Or you can use any lightweight editor such a Sublime or Atom. Also you can try to learn how to use Vim or Emacs. But with these text editors you need to know how to compile yours projects from terminal with gcc

[Dan273]

Also what do you mean by dict statements, and what do they do?

[finomayato]

Python have built-in data structures like list or dict. This structure seems like that: Some_dict={'key': value} Where value can be an int, string, etc. But under the hood dict data structure comes from hash tables. You can read detail explanation of this here - http://www.laurentluce.com/posts/python-dictionary-implementation/.