This is abit off topic as well but would you guys recommend an IDE for teaching a beginner or a generic text editor and the command line? Being a Java programmer I use netbeans but am curious if / at what point in teaching someone I should start them with an IDE and which IDEs would be best for a beinner (Eclipse has been recommended to me). My plan was to have them do a single hello world app using the command line to learn the basics of how the language works and then get them started with an IDE. Suggestions?
The first language I learned was Java. I would highly recommended it for a learning language (the syntax and semantics are nice IMO) except for some obvious pitfalls such as: you don't learn memory management or the usage of pointers. I do recommend Java however if you want to learn the OOP conecepts.
When I got to high school they had a few programming courses offered in VB but coming from a language like Java I really didn't feel it was a very good learning language.
My university starts its computer science majors off with a course in C. Personally I think a new programmer should learn a language that handles memory management for them first so they can get the basics down before they start with C.
