I'd personally have to go for
Pratchett, Spider Robinson, Douglas Adams, C.S. Lewis, Tolkien, William Gibson. Also I hope no one forgets the absolutely wonderful J.K. Rowling and anyone who hasn't read the Potter books is missing out on something truly special.
I just recently complete a 3 year Comp Sci technical program at Dawson College here in Quebec.
Now my school was a bit behind the times this was the curriculum I had.
1st Year - Quick Basic, Visual Basic, MS Access, COBOL
2nd Year - 2 More COBOL courses, two C++ Courses and an introductory HTML course
3rd Year - DB2, Oracle, Java/Perl (as a combined course). With DB2 we did more COBOl
So I've learnt a pretty good range of languages. From BASIC, to Java to COBOL. I've taught myself PHP, ASP since then (ASP wasn't by choice...)
I would've loved to have learny assembler and I think that'll be my next project.
Anyway I found learning Java at the point I did (after learning C++) couldn't have been better. It gave me a taste of a decent programming language for creating GUIs (VB doesn't count and we didn't do any of that in C++)... When I first started working with it I absolutely despised it. It was my least favorite language after BASIC.
However after working with it for a while, I learnt to love it. I found it to be a very elegant language. Besides database access everything was quite intuitive.
I've been looking for a chance to sink my teeth into it again but where I'm working now most of my programming is more along the lines of PHP and Perl...
Anyway... I've gone off on quite the tangent.
Dawson is changing the curriculum next year. It's basically going to be a 3 year Web programming course.
No C++, No COBOL...
But there'll be more Networking, PHP, Perl, 3 or 4 Java Courses...
If I had been given Java as my first programming language I would've hated it and it probably would've completely turned me away from programming. If you don't know any programming concepts before going in Java will seem like way more of a hassle then it's actually worth.
Oh forget it... my point has been lost...
Java is NOT a good beginner language.
Now I jsut have to learn Python and Assembler and I'll be happy:)
The Last great PC games I played were Star Control 2 and Myst. Both had all the elements I want, great gameplay, incredible design, infinite replay value and an incredible story. Everything since has just sucked:) Well, except for StarCraft but that was merely good, not great. I don't know what the big deal was with the Sims, I liked it up until I got promoted to the highest level and then it just got boring...
Slashdot Mirror
The other Discworld artist is NOT Jack Kirby who was the famour comic book artist from X-Men and Spider-Man and whatnot... the artist is JOSH Kirby .
I'd personally have to go for
Pratchett, Spider Robinson, Douglas Adams, C.S. Lewis, Tolkien, William Gibson. Also I hope no one forgets the absolutely wonderful J.K. Rowling and anyone who hasn't read the Potter books is missing out on something truly special.
I'm just imagining a new Nasa Funded Robotica or Battle Bots taking place in space now.
I just recently complete a 3 year Comp Sci technical program at Dawson College here in Quebec.
:)
Now my school was a bit behind the times this was the curriculum I had.
1st Year - Quick Basic, Visual Basic, MS Access, COBOL
2nd Year - 2 More COBOL courses, two C++ Courses and an introductory HTML course
3rd Year - DB2, Oracle, Java/Perl (as a combined course). With DB2 we did more COBOl
So I've learnt a pretty good range of languages. From BASIC, to Java to COBOL. I've taught myself PHP, ASP since then (ASP wasn't by choice...)
I would've loved to have learny assembler and I think that'll be my next project.
Anyway I found learning Java at the point I did (after learning C++) couldn't have been better. It gave me a taste of a decent programming language for creating GUIs (VB doesn't count and we didn't do any of that in C++)... When I first started working with it I absolutely despised it. It was my least favorite language after BASIC.
However after working with it for a while, I learnt to love it. I found it to be a very elegant language. Besides database access everything was quite intuitive.
I've been looking for a chance to sink my teeth into it again but where I'm working now most of my programming is more along the lines of PHP and Perl...
Anyway... I've gone off on quite the tangent.
Dawson is changing the curriculum next year. It's basically going to be a 3 year Web programming course.
No C++, No COBOL...
But there'll be more Networking, PHP, Perl, 3 or 4 Java Courses...
If I had been given Java as my first programming language I would've hated it and it probably would've completely turned me away from programming. If you don't know any programming concepts before going in Java will seem like way more of a hassle then it's actually worth.
Oh forget it... my point has been lost...
Java is NOT a good beginner language.
Now I jsut have to learn Python and Assembler and I'll be happy
The Last great PC games I played were Star Control 2 and Myst. Both had all the elements I want, great gameplay, incredible design, infinite replay value and an incredible story. Everything since has just sucked :) Well, except for StarCraft but that was merely good, not great. I don't know what the big deal was with the Sims, I liked it up until I got promoted to the highest level and then it just got boring...