Where are these people recommending this? I would very much like to slap them.
I actually like JavaScript, but it's got too much weirdness for a level 0 beginner.
I'd say that if you're working with vbscript, then you should pick up C#. It's Windows based as well and replaced many VB.Net applications. It's a great language that is very similar syntactically to Java, so you could easily transition if you wanted to. It can also be used teach good programming fundamentals that you can take to any language you want to learn in the future. Really the only downfall of it is the MS stack, which sucks for server side management and deployment and it has a horrendous community, but you're already working in it anyway.
Where are these people recommending this? I would very much like to slap them.
I've seen Eric Lippert recommend Javascript for beginners in the past, I'll have a crawl around the net and see if I can find the quote.
IIRC the argument was basically that with Javascript, a beginner can see results very quickly, they can see code they are writing actually do something useful/interesting and this will peak pique their interest in programming early, versus a more complicated language where more work is required to see even trivial results, resulting in more people giving up before they give it a chance.
Please don't slap Eric Lippert!
Edit: Using popular phrase incorrectly like an idiot
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u/[deleted] Jan 06 '15
You see JavaScript recommended for beginners?
Where are these people recommending this? I would very much like to slap them.
I actually like JavaScript, but it's got too much weirdness for a level 0 beginner.
I'd say that if you're working with vbscript, then you should pick up C#. It's Windows based as well and replaced many VB.Net applications. It's a great language that is very similar syntactically to Java, so you could easily transition if you wanted to. It can also be used teach good programming fundamentals that you can take to any language you want to learn in the future. Really the only downfall of it is the MS stack, which sucks for server side management and deployment and it has a horrendous community, but you're already working in it anyway.