by Charles Hughes

Created on: March 07, 2007   Last Updated: April 19, 2007

JavaScript is my recommended language to start learning the basics of programming. Bear in mind that it has some severe limitations, the most notable being its inability to read and write files, but it does provide a rewarding learning environment. If you have a web browser and a text editor such as the "Notebook" program that comes with all Windows operating systems you have everything you need to get started. It's an excellent way to learn basic programming techniques and get a feel for what kinds of tasks you can make your programs perform.

Javascript was created to add interactivity to web browsers. The code is inserted into an HTML script. This script describes what goes where inside the browser window. This interdependency makes it necessary for you to know a little HTML before you learn JavaScript. The good news is that HTML is quick to learn. It takes less than a dozen short lines of code to produce a web page. There are many free tutorials on the web that will give you the basics. Just search "tutorial" and "html". Similarly there are many free JavaScript tutorials available.

A number of sites feature free JavaScript code that you can copy and paste into your own HTML code. My favorite is "The JavaScript Source" at http://javascript.internet.com/ . Naturally, most of their code is geared toward making web pages more functional, but there are some scripts that could be standalone programs, such as games, metric conversion calculators, word count programs, quizzes, slideshow creators, dictionaries and other goodies. You can learn quite a bit by studying the source code.

Learning JavaScript will acquaint you with data structures, concepts and techniques that are common to all programming languages. You'll learn about variables, arrays, functions, "for loops", "while loops", conditional statements, and even a smattering of "object oriented" concepts. You'll also, no doubt, learn about programming "bugs" and how to debug a program that behaves unexpectedly, or not at all.

JavaScript lacks the debugging support that is supplied when you program in a compiled language such as C or C++ using the Borland or Microsoft compilers. These compilers allow you to "step through" your program one line at a time, keeping track of all the variables so that you can see exactly which line of code causes a fatal or undesirable flaw. I miss this capability when I program in JavaScript. It's also a great learning aid, giving you a visual demo of how your program operates. One trick I learned when I need to know where a JavaScript code has misbehaved is to insert the line, "alert("Here we are");" into the script just before where I think the problem lies. This instruction causes a Message Box to pop up. If it doesn't, the problem is earlier. You can also use this technique to have it tell you the value of certain variables.

My second choice for a starting programming language, Perl, may actually be the better choice for you if you want to learn how to write programs that run outside a web browser. Like JavaScript, there's an abundance of free tutorials on the internet that will get you started. Unlike JavaScript, you must download and install Perl on your computer. A good download site is at http://www.perl.com/download.csp , and it's free. On Windows computers, the programs that you write run outside of Windows in the DOS environment, which is why it is my second choice. Otherwise, it is superior to JavaScript in its capabilities and power.

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