General Discussion

I was wondering what you all thought was a good programming language to begin with, I was honstly considering assembly language, not for its usefulness but more for the understanding it can give about the computer, but so far people have told me not to bother. Everytime I hit up google for a good beginner language, it comes up  with so many options that I'm unsure of what to pick. Currently I'm kind of leaning towards python but I'm still not sure. My aim for the future is some kind of AI programming but not necessarily for games, so it would be helpful if it was a good language for that.

If you like AI, one of the best languages for AI starts with a "P"... too bad I forgot which it was, but it probably is Python?...

And I agree, don't bother with assembly... You won't use it very much or at all. Chances are, you will learn one assembly language in school, and you will understand the jist of it. Then if you do need a specific one in the future, then you can always learn it then.

I recommend learning what you plan to use now (for side projects and whatnot), because there's way too many to try and learn them all.

Edit: BTW, my first language was C++

I think I may go with Python then, thank you. I think the P language your thinking of my well be prolog though, the thing is, its meant to be difficult to learn. So python it is!

Python and LUA are the main programing languages in game AI, and 3D Apps.  I am not too sure how much it is used outside this sector.

Lau actually looks pretty good, not a lot of information about it though, is it used in more generic AI programming or primarily in games?

i always think that programmers are quite great !!! i learnt the several computer languages in the school..but i'm really lack of this talent of it. couldn't understand them all  LOL  so..you are doing a great job ..

Originally posted by Blinxer

Lau actually looks pretty good, not a lot of information about it though, is it used in more generic AI programming or primarily in games?

It's best to think of Lua as a language that's useful for configuring things in apps written in other languages like C and C++; whatever there's an API for.

If you're searching for a "beginning" language, I think it's important to know exactly what type of applications you want to develop.

You might want to search programming paradigms first to narrow down your choices. There's "procedural" languages like C, then object-oriented languages like C++ and C# which usually support procedural programming as well. Then there's declarative programming like XAML and XSLT.

Research the paradigms first and see which your mind wraps around best; and from there choose a language. I'd personally suggest either C++ or C# and start with object-oriented programming; simply because you might as well learn about things like namespaces, classes and all sorts of datatypes and etc.