TID: Mystic BBS 1.12 A46   
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   REPLY: 36.fidonet_pascal@1:226/17 233590f6   
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   On 28 May 2020 at 08:44p, Charles Stephenson pondered and said...   
       
    CS> EXACTLY! :)  I think if I learn Pascal, it'll be a good bridge to   
    CS> learning other languages.   
      
   I wouldn't bother starting with Pascal.   
      
   The critical thing when learning how to program is   
   really learning how to think algorithmically; to that   
   end, Pascal is an OK language (and was pretty good   
   when it was introduced) but it's become dated and   
   there's enough minutia that one has to keep track of   
   that, even as simple as it is, it can be difficult   
   to see the forest for the trees.   
      
   I'd strongly recommend looking at a Lisp dialect,   
   Go, or a functional language when starting out.   
   Specific recommendations are Racket (a member of   
   the Lisp family) or Standard ML (a functional   
   language); Go is an imperative systems language,   
   but can be a bid fiddly around the edges.   
      
   Why these and not others?  Because they really   
   influence how you think about programming.  Once   
   you've got those down, you can look at C and an   
   assembly language of your choice.  But your first   
   language will really put a strong shadow on how   
   you think that'll take several years to move out   
   from under; thus, choose wisely.  A language that   
   started life on a CDC-6000 series mainframe in   
   the early 70s just doesn't take advantage of some   
   of the advances in the field that make learning   
   easier.   
      
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