Thank you for this. I have been keen to go into programming. I believe I have that mind, but lack the physical skills.
Shouldn't the question, "What do you want to do" come into it as well as what language to use?
I wouldn't recommend Java to a guy who just wants to code websites for example.
I have been asking myself this question for a long time, and the end result is I would love to contribute in a meaningful way to the development of Blockchain. So with that in mind, what language should a total newbie start with first?
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Java's actually fine for websites but definitely has a longer ramp-up period. Grails is a framework based on groovy (which is java but with a lot of the annoying BS chopped off) that runs on the JVM. I've heard it's pretty good.
It does matter a little bit what you want to achieve. Some languages are more suitable for certain tasks, but there are also a lot of misconceptions. Java, for example, is used a lot to make websites, often with the Spring framework.
Generally speaking, you can do anything with a language. Where I work we have a website written in C++. It seems insane, but there were good reasons for picking C++ at the time.
If I'm forced to answer the question, I say newbie's should pick a mainstream language that has a large support community - you are going to need help in the beginning :)
should I imagine that is a very long code?
The website in C++? That depends on what you consider long! ;)
The programmer who wrote it is extremely good. He even wrote a templating engine and SOAP API for it. It's the kind of project that if you study it, you can learn a lot. It's not perfect (he seldom wrote tests), but the design and implementation is very good.