I taught 2 100 level programming classes as an adjunct professor once and used C#.
I'm a Python web developer now and think it would be the ideal language to use for teaching. It has all of the important OO concepts baked in, and the interactive aspect makes it a very very easy language for beginners to learn.
Frankly though, C, Java, C#, or Python all seem like fine options. Each is probably best suited for certain audiences, but any of them are better than C++ and PHP.
While C++ and PHP are very popular languages, no one should learn them first. They're both hideous to look at (which matters to beginners), and in the case of PHP, just very hackish and lacking in good structure.
Start with pygame. Everybody loves a good simple game.
Please don't just copy & paste from random blogs and tutorials. They might work just fine, but you'll have no real idea of how things work.
Buy a good book, and even more importantly, find a good mentor. Find someone whose been doing syadmin work for years to bounce ideas off of.
Depending on what your software stack looks like, finding a smaller community associated with one of your pieces of software can be very helpful. CherryPy was the first Python web framework I learned, and it has a wonderfully helpful, if small, community.
Slashdot Mirror
Multi-user screen: http://aperiodic.net/screen/multiuser Gobby (multi-user text editor): http://gobby.0x539.de/trac/
Huh, I actually just cancelled my Netflix account due to the new player. I was hoping because it was Silverlight it would one day work on Linux.
Sadly after a few weeks it didn't even work on Windows XP for me. Even when it did work the framerate was *awful* compared to the old player.
Then I find out Netflix only offers *phone* support. Forget it. Hulu, torrents, and my local library can easily replace Netflix.
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
...
...
Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0
X-AspNet-Version: 2.0.50727
Disappointing.
I taught 2 100 level programming classes as an adjunct professor once and used C#.
I'm a Python web developer now and think it would be the ideal language to use for teaching. It has all of the important OO concepts baked in, and the interactive aspect makes it a very very easy language for beginners to learn.
Frankly though, C, Java, C#, or Python all seem like fine options. Each is probably best suited for certain audiences, but any of them are better than C++ and PHP.
While C++ and PHP are very popular languages, no one should learn them first. They're both hideous to look at (which matters to beginners), and in the case of PHP, just very hackish and lacking in good structure.
Start with pygame. Everybody loves a good simple game.
Just my $0.02 though.
Please don't just copy & paste from random blogs and tutorials. They might work just fine, but you'll have no real idea of how things work.
Buy a good book, and even more importantly, find a good mentor. Find someone whose been doing syadmin work for years to bounce ideas off of.
Depending on what your software stack looks like, finding a smaller community associated with one of your pieces of software can be very helpful. CherryPy was the first Python web framework I learned, and it has a wonderfully helpful, if small, community.
This is great! The only thing I need Windows for is playing games that don't work on Linux.
billg can sit back and watch me pwn some n00bs