High Or Low Level? 4 beginners

[ubik]

Hello .. I want to start off by saying i know very little about programming concepts. A while back i did I go through some visual basic book, never quite finished I was actually starting to like Python because of its clean syntax when i was doing that for a while but again got distracted from that... but now I'm thinking about c++ , my question here is Do you guys recommend starting off at a high level language? or something lowlevel cause im currently reading "Art Of Assembly"... but not quite sure if i should just switch over to something more modern? any replies appreciated.

In other words do you think assembly will be more difficult for me to grasp as if i were to go with c++ instead?

:confused:

[SpirtOfGrandeur]

Assembly is a dead language for the most part. Now before I get flamed out the ying/yang let me explain. There will probably always be a need for Assembly programmers. And because of the lack of them there will probably always be a high demand in the market place for them.

That being said the language is much more grief then benefit. Almost any computer now-in-days can run an assembly loop as fast as a C++ loop (The code is usually reduced by 30%+). Due to higher processors and ram. Now do not get me wrong.

There is a definite need for you to understand assembly and how the computer actually works. And with every different chip there are usually more instructions that can be carried out. I would grab an assembly book and not be so concerned with the actual syntax but try to understand why the computer runs this way. Then when you move on to c++ and you think of a loop you will see it in the "assembly" that it is condensed into.

I hope my views help :)

[oracleguy]

Assembly is a dead language for the most part. Now before I get flamed out the ying/yang let me explain. There will probably always be a need for Assembly programmers. And because of the lack of them there will probably always be a high demand in the market place for them.

LOL, I think that is the funniest thing I've read all week. Assembly is still used, you wouldn't be writing entire applications in them but it is still used. Any time you need to have precise control over what the computer is doing, that is what you want to use.

Additionally, learning assembly is a good idea because it gives you a good grasp of what the computer is doing when you write in a higher level language, you can write more efficient code because you have a better idea what the costs will be.

That being said the language is much more grief then benefit.
Perhaps but it is an entirely different type of language, granted you might have to write 8 lines of code to do some thing you could do in 1 in C but thats the difference between a high level language and a low level one.

Almost any computer now-in-days can run an assembly loop as fast as a C++ loop (The code is usually reduced by 30%+). Due to higher processors and ram. Now do not get me wrong.
You realize that lots of C/C++ functions are written in assembly right? e.g. strcat()

As to the OP, I'd suggest you learn C++ and then if you want to you can learn Assembly, it really depends on what you want to be building.

[sirams]

Yes, I agree with said above. I started with Pascal, but soon realised that it is only for start, not for real (although you can do much in Delphi which is like Pascal). So I switched to C++. Everything was fine until I started multimedia programming and I needed really good performance there. So I looked for some assembly books to accelerate my code in places where it really would benefit from assembly (especially MMX). And such approach works fine for me.
Good luck.