Hi All. Up til now, i have not joined in the discussion but followed the thread with much interest. Here are my thoughts. It is going to be a bit of a ramble, but please bear with me.
In life as it is with anything else, and programming is no exception to this rule, the purpose of wanting to learn a trade or subject is, i believe, as issential as the desire to want to learn it. Focussing it all back to the programming context, I strongly believe that the young man must, with the guidance of his teacher, and in his own mind, set out the purpose for his wanting to launch himself into the task at hand. He must know, for example, what he wants to achieve with his new tool, what he wants to specialize in, Gui or web development for instance, his ability to understand an alien concept, his ability to grasp the ease and hardships involved when adopting his preferred programming environment, how it will affect his ability to carve out a proffession from his chosen field, all these are as important as the desire to learn programming it self. To me, it doesn't really matter what language he wants to start with, as long as he and his teacher embark on enough research to ensure that the language of his choice affords the most comfortable learning curve and environment for him. Once he's found his niche so to speak, he might then want to branch out in the future. The desire to learn something new and creative is exciting in itself. But without a purpose, without setting your own goals and your future plans for putting what you have newly acquired to practical use, the excitement will fizzle out. The danger is that it can happen in the midst of the learning process, then absolutely nothing would have been achieved. Learning to program in whatever language,, even for the best brains among us will inevitably become a struggle at some stage of the learning curve. It is at that stage when we have to depend on our goals and purpose to see us through, and it is precisely at this point that the goals that we have previously set will rule more strongly then our original desire to learn how to program as in this case. in many ways, the young man in question, and many of us new programmers, are fortunate because we have got many tools, all thanks to the IT revolution, to help us in our cause of action. I'm sure the veterans amongst us would have found their decision to take up the programming challenge more of a struggle, especially those who've had little or no sight to speak of. So in terms of researching, for example, which programming language would suit our needs, there should be no excuse not to find that out first. It is always exciting to discover that you have found a new road to travel on. The struggle is how to continue along that road with all it's bumps, twists and turns. Cheers!
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